The Final Frontier…

 Posted by Mike  U.S. Politics  3 Responses »
Jul 292005
 

I love NASA, and I’m not quite sure why. The liberal pragmatist in me says that the money that we spend putting men in space could better spent on poverty reduction or education. The laissez faire American in me (yes, it really does exist) thinks that perhaps space exploration could be carried out more efficiently or productively if done by the free-market. And it isn’t like I ever really grew up wanting to be an astronaut or walk on the moon or anything.

Perhaps its because of the knowledge that we can gain from space. We don’t really know what’s out in space; what it looks like or how it works. The more that we learn about the galaxies, the stars, and the other planets, the more that it teaches us about ourselves, our place in the universe, and how life here on Earth works. And, the more it teaches us about the infinite imagination of God.

Perhaps it is the problem-solving aspect of the whole business. I love puzzles, and just attempting to do the simplest thing can present a wide variety of puzzles with a wide variety of solutions. Some of these are useful here on Earth; velcro has to be one of mankind’s greatest achievements. Others tell us a lot about our similarities and differences. (I love the story of the problem of writing in an environment without gravity. Pens need gravity to work; its why you can’t write upside down with them. So, American engineers spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to design a pressurized pen that would write without the aid of gravity. Soviet engineers made sure that their space-craft were well-equipped with pencils.)

Or perhaps it has to do with the extraordinary possibilities that space presents. There are so many different things to do. When Americans look up at the stars and imagine the possibilities, it probably isn’t all that different from when Picasso looked at a blank canvas. We can do anything, go anywhere, as long as we have the patience and determination. We can colonize planets or explore the outer-reaches of space. We can imagine new economies and industries, new governments and societies, new cultures and philosophies, all of which might be allowed to thrive because of the infinite variety of challenges that space represents.

So, I think all of that is to say, I can’t be more saddened that the Discovery launch the other day was not as perfect as it could have been, although I have every hope that they will get the problems solved soon. Because when we look up at the stars, we all turn into little kids imagining what our futures are going to be.

Social Judgment

 Posted by Mike  Issues, Poverty, Religion  5 Responses »
Jul 272005
 

Americans like to focus on personal responsibility. For liberals this takes the form of Civil Rights; for conservatives it tends to focus on personal responsibilities and incentive structures. But there is definitely an element in both traditional American liberalism and conservativism that the key building block of society is the individual; that people will do their own things, make their own mistakes, and be judged for it individually. This philosophy fits very well with classic, mainline protestant doctrine; the Anglicans, Lutherans, and Methodists who founded this country, and who all felt that God would judge us individually based on some combination of our own faith and our works.

So, I find it interesting that this is decidedly not the world view of the modern social conservative movement in the United States. There is a strong belief, even a fear, among many Christian evangelicals that God will judge us not only individually, but also as a society. That there are real social consequences, both in this life and the next, for our social sins. While this may come as a shock to some of you who generally think that I harbor only contempt for the Religious Right, I think I agree with them. God will judge us for our social sins in addition to our individual ones, both in this life and the next.

Where I disagree with the conservative religious movement, however, is when it comes to which sins I think God will judge us for. The Religious Right tends to use this concept to justify their support for codifying moral beliefs and the public expression of God’s role in society. This is why many conservative Christians support school prayer, Ten Commandments monuments, the “under God in the pledge of allegiance”, anti-sodomy laws, and the gay marriage amendment.

If you listen to Rev. Falwell, Rev. Robertson or Dr. Dobson, they will tell you that these things reflect on society’s moral compass. That by getting rid of these things, we are falling further away from God and allowing our society to become more and more secular. And that God will judge us for turning our backs on Him; that he will punish us by removing the international security that He has granted us (many Christian conservatives saw 9/11 as a sign that God was removing His hand of protection from the United States), and that come judgment day that our leaders will have to answer before God about why they took Him out of our public lives. These guys love preaching on Sodom and Rome; the great city and the great empire that God brought down into ashes because of their secularism and the incumbent sexual immorality.

This is where we will have to agree to disagree, however, because I don’t believe that is the primary way we will be judged. First of all, a society’s secularism has nothing to do with whether or not it has the word “God” inscribed on its pledges, coins, and court-house walls. The secularism or religiosity of a society depends on the extent to which Christians can spread the love and message of Christ through society, by living their daily lives “in the world, but not of the world”. Christ isn’t going to judge me because my neighbor is living a sexually immoral lifestyle, be that a homosexual or a heterosexual one.

Where Christ will judge me, and my society, however, is on how well we do at taking care of the more, the needy, and the downtrodden. This is one of the big failures of American society; when I worry about how God will bless or condemn the United States, I worry a lot about how we are treating the poor and the powerless. And to me, one of the great tragedies of American politics is that so many evangelical Christians have aligned themselves with so many pro-business, anti-tax groups who couldn’t care less what happened to the poor. These Christians have deluded themselves into believing that care for the poor is a noble goal, but also a voluntary thing that cannot, or should not, be dictated by law. And that’s simply an idea that I cannot reconcile with my Bible, or with a God who mandated tithing, charitable giving, and food distribution programs.

When judgment day comes, many of the elite, powerful, wealthy Christians in America are going to stand in front of God and be shocked. For they will expect to be congratulated on protecting God’s place in the public eye, and for fighting the good fight against sexual immorality. And instead, God will look at them, gather up the poorest, most defenseless people in society, those who were harmed the most by Medicaid and welfare cuts, and He is going to say “let’s ask these people how you should be judged”. And I don’t think that the Christian elite are going to like the answer.

Bias and Fear

 Posted by Mike  Issues, Racism  8 Responses »
Jul 252005
 

It is human nature to fear the unknown and the unfamiliar. In Hollywood, this was Hitchcock’s great realization. Within the respective frameworks of their movies, Norman Bates was not nearly as dangerous as many of the monsters who came before him. He killed a couple lost tourists; Dracula and Frankenstein terrorized whole regions of eastern and central Europe, respectively. But Psycho is a much scarier movie than those monster films because we spend most of the film not understanding who is killing, when, or why. The Sixth Sense creeped me out the first time I saw it, because neither you nor the little boy knows what is happening or why; all you know is that there are scary ghosts running around, and you really don’t want to know more than that. But the great thing about that film is that as soon as he (and you) figures out who the ghosts are and what they want, they are no longer scary; they are pitiable. In other words, the shadow is always more frightening than the monster.

I am reminded of this as I watch the reaction to the London bombings unfold. Frankly, I was a little disturbed by the media coverage. An innocent young man was shot to death by mistaken London police officers; a tragic event to be sure. But the reaction to that shooting has been a little warped, with family members and critics of the police quick to point out that this man could not have been a real threat; yeah he had dark skin, but he was a Catholic from Brazil, not an Arab Muslim! As if his race, religion, or skin tone had anything to do with his likelihood of posing a threat to his fellow man. Yes, there are plenty of Islamic and Arab terrorist groups. But the second most deadly terrorist attack in American history was perpetrated by good’ol white, male, protestant Americans. It was not so long ago that Northern Irish terrorists were threatening London and Basque terrorists still threaten Madrid. Even in this day and age of international terrorism, you are most likely to be killed by people who look and believe the same as you, and that is true virtually everywhere in the world.

But try telling that to the nervous man on an airplane sitting next to a young, bearded Arab, or the nervous woman on a subway sitting next to a young, casually-dressed African-American.

The downside of this fear of the unknown, of the unfamiliar, of the “different”, is that discrimination will always exist. People will always be more likely to trust, hire, promote, etc. People who look, act, behave, and believe like they do. That applies to race, ethnicity, sex, socio-economic class, regional background, educational background, age, and religion. I’d be willing to bet that you could take down only the race, religion, hometown, sex, birthday and university of any hiring manager, take those same statistics for every candidate in the candidate pool, and come to a pretty accurate ranking of their likelihood of being hired, even without glancing at a single job description or resume. And it isn’t about being a racist; you could be hiring for a civil rights attorney at the Southern Poverty Law Center, and I still bet that you’d make some pretty accurate predictions. It’s a sad, but true, statement about human nature.

The upside, however, is that there is something we can do about it. People fear the unknown and the unfamiliar, but knowledge and familiarity can be procured. We can also overcome our fears; while perhaps we may never fully eliminate the bias that they cause, we can make it a daily battle, and do a lot of good for a lot of people in the meantime. Bias will always exist, but it does not have to be given free-range.

So, from a societal standpoint, that means we ought to be fighting against bias and discrimination actively and constantly. The war on racism hasn’t been won; it is a never-ending battle against human nature. And we make progress in that fight not by claiming innocence; we win it by acknowledging our flaws and fighting them. We defeat racism and socio-economic discrimination by making constant attempts to gain familiarity with groups different than ourselves, and encouraging our children to do like-wise. And I don’t mean feeding the poor at a homeless shelter once every month; you gain familiarity by doing things with people and not by doing things aimed at them. We defeat sexism by breaking down the false barriers we establish between men’s and women’s roles; and that means opening up opportunities for boys as well as girls.

But we cannot defeat a fear if we allow are selves to succumb to it. The real problem with racial and ethnic profiling, “random” searches, and general assumptions about the race, ethnicity, or religion of unaccused, unconfirmed terrorist attacks, is that these things make it seem okay to discriminate. We allow them to justify and rationalize our fears, which in turn institutionalizes the bias that we should be fighting. They allow us to revel in our fears of the shadow; when if we would only stand up and confront it, we would find that the monster really isn’t all that scary.

Supreme Qualifications

 Posted by Mike  Judicial System, Legal Philosophy, Nomination and Confirmation, U.S. Politics  No Responses »
Jul 222005
 

It seems that the time has come to ask ourselves one simple question: what do we want in a Supreme Court Justice? What makes a good one?

Now, as far as I can tell, there are basically two standard answers that most interest groups will give to the question.

First, many interest groups will say that a good Supreme Court Justice will rule the way that I want him/her to rule on the issues that I care about. This is basically the position of both pro-life and pro-choice groups, and many, many others. When these groups call someone an “extremist” they mean that he holds what they consider to be extremist views on a particular issue. For NOW, this means that the candidate disagrees with Roe v. Wade and wants to overturn it; for the Christian Coalition, it means that a candidate thinks that Roe v. Wade didn’t go far enough in protecting the rights of women.

There are problems, however, with this standard. First of all, it encourages judicial activism. Judicial activism is about deciding a case with little or no reference to precedent or codified law. It means deciding how you want the case to turn out, and then ruling with that side in spite of the law, not because of it. This is actually exceedingly rare, despite the accusations thrown around recently by the Republican party and the Religious Right. However, when it does happen, it is because a judge allows his own personal feelings on an issue interfere with his application of the law to that issue. If you only care that a judge has a good record on abortion, but you do not care why that judge has that record, you run the risk of promoting such an activist.

Furthermore, this standard means that groups that hold differing opinions will hold diametrically opposed views of the same candidates. It eliminates the possibility of their being an objective test for a judge’s qualifications. It may be that there is no such thing as an objectively good judge, but I am either too hopeful or naive to believe that; I will let you decide which.

The second standard for judicial quality that is often thrown around by interest groups, and by the media, is that the candidate’s judicial philosophy is the same as mine, and that he will adhere to his standard intelligently and consistently. Now, there are many different judicial philosophies; a recent article by the New York Times catalogued five different types of judicial conservatism, with little or no reference to judicial liberals. There are libertarians, orginialists, judicial pragmatists, etc. And, of course, many groups are willing to concede that multiple of these judicial philosophies are legitimate; for instance, Scalia is an originalist and Thomas a libertarian, but most people who like one also like the other. But still, there are definitely “appropriate” and “inappropriate” philosophies, depending on where you stand on the political spectrum.

This standard is preferable to a pure focus on issues; it does at least get beyond the “what” of a candidates beliefs and into the “why”, and therefore avoids the possibility of judicial activism. (I suppose you could argue that some of these judicial philosophies necessarily lead towards activism of a particular kind, but that is a debatable question, and I certainly don’t know enough about the philosophy of law to have an intelligent conversation on that topic.) This standard, however, still gets into the quagmire of mutually exclusive sets of “good” or “qualified” candidates. And again, I’m not ready to admit that.

Personally, I think of four basic, broad standards for a Supreme Court judge, and I have a hard time saying that anyone who fails to meet those four standards is unqualified for the post or undeserving of confirmation. First, does he know the law? So, I want to know about judicial background and make sure that they are easily and comfortable familiar with the Constitution, precedent, and important codified law. Second, is he experienced? I want someone who has thought about the important questions, had significant time as a judge, scholar, or Constitutional lawyer, argued and heard a wide variety of cases over an extended period of time. Third, is he intelligent? I want someone with the ability to follow the intricacies of a variety of specialized topics, to be able to quickly learn the necessary information about strip-mining or migratory patterns, and apply that information to the case, and be able to learn on his feet and ask intelligent questions about these subjects with very little background or prompting. Fourth, is he open-minded? I want someone who is willing to consider new arguments and new ideas; who will really listen to the participants in each case and withhold judgment until all the facts are in.

If you give me a judge with those four qualities, then I will say that they are most likely deserving of qualifications (as long as they don’t torture puppies in their spare time or anything like that). Does Judge Roberts fit the bill? To be honest, I don’t know, but this is what Senate hearings are for.

Let the Confirmation Process Begin!

 Posted by Mike  Bush Administration, Judicial System, Nomination and Confirmation, U.S. Politics  No Responses »
Jul 202005
 

As you have probably heard, President Bush nominated Judge John G. Roberts for the Supreme Court. Now, in case you want to read up on Judge Roberts, you may do so here, here, here, here, here, here, or here. Now, many political groups on both sides are already lining up to give their full-throated approval or disapproval (as the case may be) to the nominee. Social conservatives are in favor of this particular nomination; Christian Coalition has inserted his picture and name next to their pre-existing petition to support the President’s nominees, and Focus on the Family seems elated. Roberts was not their first choice, but they will certainly take him. Other conservatives seem cautiously optimistic about Judge Roberts’ nomination; The National Review says that he will almost certainly be a “step up” from his predecessor, while Forbes Magazine warns that he may be conservative, but conservative does not always mean pro-business. Meanwhile, liberal organizations, such as People for the American Way and the National Organization of Women, have already expressed their disapproval at the nominee and are working hard to defeat him.

So, what does all this really mean? Who is Judge John G. Roberts, and is he qualified to be a Supreme Court nominee? To be blunt, we really don’t know who he is. The only thing that anyone knows for sure about him is that he is an absolutely brilliant attorney. And therein lies the rub.

Attorneys are really good at telling people what they want to hear; at convincing them of things. Furthermore, the job of an attorney is to represent the interests of the client, not to explain his own opinions about the case. Certainly Roberts is conservative; he has repeatedly joined conservative legal groups and associated himself with conservative clients. But he does not necessarily believe every argument that he himself ever argued. Quite to the contrary, it is very likely that many of his legal position papers put forward arguments that he believes to be absolute rubbish. So, when one side or another says that “we know Judge Roberts believes X because he argued this in front of the Supreme Court five years ago”, you should take that with a grain of salt. He most likely had some amount of sympathy for his client and for the argument that he was making, but the fact that he said it does not mean that he really and truly believed it.

Furthermore, his actions at the Senate Confirmation hearings are likely to be equally difficult to digest. Again, he is a professional attorney, skilled at telling people what they want to hear and arguing a case. In the hearings, that case will be his own views and qualifications, and I would expect that he will acquit himself fine. But at the end of the day, those hearings are no more likely to discover what he truly thinks and believes than parsing the legal briefs that he wrote for the benefits of others. Certainly the Senate has the right and the responsibility to ask Judge Roberts a number of questions about his judicial philosophy and his views on a wide range of issues. But do not expect ground-breaking testimony from them. Chances are, the hearings, the political ads, the grass-roots mobilization from both sides is likely to be much ado about nothing.

Really, it seems that President Bush has chosen a decent nominee; a brilliant man, conservative enough to please his base, and not so much of an ideologue that he is easily attacked by the Democrats. But we also need to remember that, like any Supreme Court nominee, we will all likely be surprised at his position once he actually sits on the bench.

So sit back, let the Senate do its job, and rest assured that everything will be ok, one way or the other.

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