Running Chicken

Reflecting on this video, from MSNBC’s “Up w/Chris...

Mon, 28 May 2012 13:25:00 -0500

Reflecting on this video, from MSNBC’s “Up w/Chris Hayes,” Mark Finkelstein writes:

[W]hat does it say about the liberal chattering class, which Hayes epitomizes, that it chokes on calling America’s fallen what they rightly and surely are: heroes? Watch the hesitant Hayes in what almost seems a parody of the conflicted intellectual.

Hayes and Finkelstein both have a problem when it comes to thinking about heroism, but Finkelstein’s is so egregious that it makes Hayes’ seem to disappear. For Finkelstein, every soldier is a hero because he’s intellectually paralyzed by his ~~patroitism~~ jingoism. Never mind that a whole lot of soldiers don’t actually act heroically once they’ve enlisted (or that some actually act villanously). So long as they’re in an American uniform, they must be heroes to Finkelstein. And so long as Americans are fighting, it must be a just war.

For Hayes, we should be wary of celebrating our soldiers because war is terrible. On this understanding, celebrating the solider in any way seems to end up supporting violence; Hayes is uncomfortable “about the word because it seems to me that it is so rhetorically proximate to justifications for more war.” For Finkelstein, this makes Hayes the very definition of “Effete: affected, overrefined, and ineffectual.”

Hayes, however, isn’t exactly the caricature that Finkelstein so desperately wants him to be. As the Huffington Post piece on this “hero controversy” points out:

Hayes then said that, on the flip side, it could be seen as “noble” to join the military. “This is voluntary,” he said, adding that, though a “liberal caricature” like himself would not understand “submitting so totally to what the electorate or people in power are going to decide about using your body,” he saw valor in it.

I wrote about this back in March, critiquing Stephen Marche’s Esquire piece, “State of the American Hero”:

What he’s saying is that it was never heroic simply to serve, even when everyone was doing it. It was just doing one’s duty. But what he neglects to mention is that it used to be compulsory; we didn’t have the option not to do our duty. Now, of course, one chooses to enlist, one makes the active assertion that military service is one’s duty. And that’s what opens up the opportunity for heroism. Because enlisting is optional, one must actively choose to make sacrifices, to put oneself in harm’s way. Without the choice to stay home, it’s much more difficult to make the case that there is a measure of heroism simply in someone’s service in the armed forces. But since it’s not necessary, and since the rewards often seem not to outweigh the risks, it makes sense to me to praise those who enlist.

Military service — and death in action, which was the subject of Hayes’ show on Memorial Day weekend — isn’t necessarily heroic. But it can be. And here’s Hayes’ problem: It’s not necessarily the case that calling someone a hero means lending full-throated support to the war in which the person acted heroically, nor is it necessarily the case that admitting that military service opens up a space for heroism lends rhetorical justification for any further wars. It’s possible to fight valiantly for a bad cause, just as it’s possible to act badly in pursuit of a just cause. And, most importantly, it’s possible to understand the value (and even the virtue) of military service without supporting particular military engagements; it’s not necessary to shy away from saying that something heroic is, in fact, heroic simply because you wish the context in which it occured hadn’t existed in the first place.

HT: Michael Tofias and Matt Langdon.

Also of note: In a recent episode of The Hero Report podcast, Matt Langdon and I spent a good deal of time discussing the issue of military heroism, asking whether all soldiers should be considered heroes, and tackling some of the claims and counterclaims.

This week on the Hero Report podcast, we talk with Rabbi Ilan...

Mon, 28 May 2012 09:39:58 -0500

This week on the Hero Report podcast, we talk with Rabbi Ilan Emanuel about superhero movies, heroism in comics, and the problem of heroism in HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”

Tell us what you think about this episode, discuss these issues with us on Twitter (Matt Langdon / Ari Kohen), and join us every Friday at 4pm Eastern on Google+ for our live broadcast (where you can chat with us while we’re on the air and contribute to the conversation).

Want to make the podcast portable? Subscribe via iTunes (audio-only).

U.S. Seeks Russia’s Help in Removing Assad in Syria

Sun, 27 May 2012 13:13:11 -0500

U.S. Seeks Russia’s Help in Removing Assad in Syria:

In a new effort to halt more than a year of bloodshed in Syria, President Obama will push for the departure of President Bashar al-Assad under a proposal modeled on the transition in another strife-torn Arab country, Yemen.

The plan calls for a negotiated political settlement that would satisfy Syrian opposition groups but that could leave remnants of Mr. Assad’s government in place.

[…]

The success of the plan hinges on Russia, one of Mr. Assad’s staunchest allies, which has strongly opposed his removal.

In the past year, Russia has blocked any tough United Nations Security Council action against Mr. Assad, arguing that it could lead to his forced ouster and the kind of fates suffered by Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi of Libya, who was killed, or Hosni Mubarak of Egypt, who was imprisoned and put on trial. But Russia is facing intense international pressure to use its influence to bring about the removal of Mr. Assad as the killings in Syria continue unabated, including the massacre of more than 90 people in a village near Homs that was reported by United Nations officials on Saturday.

[…]

When Mr. Obama brought it up with Prime Minister Dmitri A. Medvedev of Russia at the Group of 8 meeting at Camp David last weekend, Mr. Medvedev appeared receptive, American officials said, signaling that Russia would prefer that option to other transitions in the Arab upheaval. During the meeting, “Medvedev raised the example of Mubarak in a cage,” a senior official said, referring to Mr. Mubarak’s confinement at his trial. The official, who requested anonymity because of the delicacy of the discussions, said Mr. Obama had then “countered with Yemen, and the indication was, yes, this was something we could talk about.”

There are several fascinating lessons emerging from what I hope is the beginning of the end of the Assad regime in Syria:

Not even the most strident isolationist wants to talk about leaving people to solve problems with their government all by themselves in the wake of a massacre of children;
Russia is far more concerned about the fate of its client autocrats than about the fate of people in the client countries;
One of the bigger barriers to removing Assad, even as he commits the most monstrous crimes, seems to be the notion that he might somehow be held accountable for those crimes.

These lessons shouldn’t be all that surprising … but the third is especially disconcerting for those who think that transitional justice efforts might someday lessen impunity. Given the nature of the UN — and of the Security Council, in particular — one has to wonder whether the tough cases, the ones in which other states have more than just a passing interest, will always be stuck as Syria is today, between the Scylla of ending atrocity and the Charybdis of ending impunity.

The Meaning of Mitzvot

Sun, 27 May 2012 07:45:26 -0500

The Meaning of Mitzvot:

Since it’s Shavuot, which commemorates the relevation at Sinai, I thought I’d post these interesting thoughts on the importance of moral action that stands at the heart of Judaism:

Rabbi Simlai, a 3rd century Amora, taught that David reduced the 613 mitzvot to 11, Isaiah to six, Micah to three (do justly, love mercy and walk humbly before Your God [6:8]), Isaiah again to two (keep justice and do righteousness [56:1]) and finally Amos to one, “Seek Me and live” (5:4) (Makkot 23b-24a). Simlai was not saying that we did not need to observe the 613 mitzvot, something that Pauline Christianity had asserted, but rather that all the mitzvot were to be seen as an attempt to bring justice and righteousness into the world. They are our way of truly seeking God. The 613 mitzvot are details of a larger philosophy, a greater belief, intended to improve the character of each person.

That which distinguishes Judaism as a religious way of life is the emphasis on deeds rather than on abstract belief. This does not denigrate the importance of belief, indeed a belief in God as One and as concerned with morality is the basis of Judaism, but these beliefs must be translated into specific deeds. Moreover, actions are the way in which character is molded.

HT: Rabbi Mordechai Levin.

Heroism in the Supermarket: Vitamin Water wants me to believe...

Sat, 26 May 2012 14:22:30 -0500

Heroism in the Supermarket:

Vitamin Water wants me to believe that drinking their sugary concoction will help to make me a superhero rather than just contribute to my obesity.

Just curious: Which vitamin is responsible for the 32 grams of sugar in this water?

An Unhelpful Taxonomy of Heroism

Sat, 26 May 2012 09:51:00 -0500

An Unhelpful Taxonomy of Heroism:

Not long ago, I happened upon the blog of Scott Allison, a professor of psychology at the University of Richmond. Allison has co-authored one book on heroism and he has another on the way.

This bit, from a blog post last month, is from a forthcoming journal article (as well as the forthcoming book):

Below is the taxonomy of heroes that we propose in Understanding Exceptional Leadership. We elaborate on these ten kinds of heroes in an article that will appear this summer in Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (Goethals & Allison, 2012).

Having thought quite a bit about heroism myself over the past few years, I’m incredibly curious about this taxonomy of heroism that Allison proposes … in no small part because it seems so clearly wrong to me in so many ways.

First of all, some of the categories don’t seem at all useful or well thought out.

The idea of the transposed hero, for example, suggests that someone can still fit into a category of heroism when (s)he becomes a villain. LeBron James is the example here, presumably because of his skill as a basketball player and his infamous Decision. But the example doesn’t really work because James isn’t really a hero in the first place. There’s nothing heroic about being good at sports and there’s nothing villanous about pursuing free agency; he likely inspired a lot of people and then disappointed some of them, but a whole lot more would ned to be said before anyone could make that seem either heroic or villainous. The same is true of the category of the tragic hero, which is where Tiger Woods and King Lear apparently fit. I know very well what’s tragic about Lear and Woods … but what’s heroic about them?

And then there’s the category of the transcendent hero, which is where we put someone who transcends categories of heroism. If you’re following along at home, that means there’s a category for people who don’t fit into categories. And the best examples? Jesus, Harry Potter, and John Wooden. First of all, Jesus is likely transcendent because he’s considered by a great many people to be divine. But, looking at the taxonomy itself, he actually fits perfectly well into either the traditional hero or the transforming hero category. Harry Potter likewise would fit comfortably into these categories. And John Wooden? Well, leaving aside the fact that John Wooden and Jesus aren’t at all similar, I suppose I’d say he’s a transparent hero … given that people in that category are described as firefighters, police, health workers, parents, coaches, and soldiers.

Or there’s the trending hero, which the taxonomy above suggests involves people who might be trending toward or away from heroism. What that means, though, is that these people aren’t curently heroes. These are people, apparently, like Lady Gaga and Woodrow Wilson. Apart from the fact that Gaga and Wilson have nothing whatsoever in common, it’s interesting to see that Gaga is the example of a hero who is trending toward heroism and Wilson is the example of a hero who is trending away from heroism. Whatever you think of Lady Gaga’s music, she has been an impressive advocate for the lgbtq community. But this doesn’t mean she’s trending toward heroism; it might mean that she’s trendy and that she’s using her considerable celebrity to help others (which might be considered heroic). And Woodrow Wilson? What was heroic about Wilson in the first place and what did he then do to move away from those things that initially seemed to make him heroic? If I was listing heroes, I can’t imagine that Woodrow Wilson would appear on any list … not because he trended away from heroism, but because he just wasn’t heroic in any way.

Of course, I’m not the first to critique the heroes who appear on Allison’s list. Here’s how Allison responds to criticism of some of the people who have been profiled on his blog:

We receive a lot of feedback about the heroes we profile on this blog and, not surprisingly, many of the comments are a bit critical of the worthiness of the heroes we choose to include here. You can read these comments and see for yourself. The heroes whose merits have been especially questioned are Justin Beiber, Betsy Ross, Tiger Woods, Mother Teresa, Secretariat, Bill O’Reilly, Lady Gaga, John Nash, and Christopher Columbus.

Some of our selections have evoked puzzlement; some annoyance; and some even anger. Some readers have suggested that we are diluting the integrity of the word “hero” by using it to describe certain categories of people, such as celebrities or athletes.

[…]

If you haven’t read our book, our definition of a hero is quite clear. Put simply, we don’t have one. The reason? Heroism is in the eye of the beholder. We’ve asked hundreds of people to list their heroes and to provide reasons for labeling someone as a hero. After studying these lists, we see that our taste in heroes is as varied as our taste in music, movies, and paintings. Defining a hero is like defining a good meal at a restaurant. It depends on your values and your personal preferences.

This seems strikingly terrible to me in a wide variety of ways. To say the heroism is perfectly relative means that absolutely anything that anyone thinks is heroic is, in fact, heroic. That means that suicide bombers can be heroes and serial killers can be heroes and torturers can be heroes. Some people might admire these sorts of people, but that just means they admire the wrong sorts of people; it doesn’t make those people into heroes. But what’s even stranger is that, if you keep reading just a few more sentences, you’ll discover that Allison actually does have a definition of heroism:

After polling a number of people, we discovered that heroes tend to have eight traits, which we call The Great Eight. These traits are smart, strong, resilient, selfless, caring, charismatic, reliable, and inspiring. It’s unusual for a hero to possess all eight of these characteristics, but most heroes have a majority of them.

This directly contradicts the notion that “Defining a hero is like defining a good meal at a restaurant. It depends on your values and your personal preferences.” Would Allison be prepared to defend someone’s choice of Osama Bin Laden or Timothy McVeigh as a hero? If “most heroes have a majority of” the “Great Eight” characteristics, why does Allison suggest that heroism is perfectly subjective? If your personal hero doesn’t have any of these characteristics, wouldn’t Allison have to concede that (s)he probably isn’t a hero?

What’s more, why does Allison then attempt to defend choices like Justin Beiber, Tiger Woods, and — worst of all — Secretariat?

My sense is either that Allison mistakenly conflates celebrity with heroism or else that these “heroes” are being featured on his blog in order to attract readers. Perhaps he really thinks that Secretariat and Betsy Ross are heroes. Quite simply, if you have a bunch of posts profiling the likes of Justin Beiber, Lady Gaga, and Tiger Woods (along with their photos), people are going to visit your website. That’s how Google works.

But they’re not heroes.

Now I don’t think that the traits put forward by Allison — which aren’t his own, but came from “polling a number of people” — are necessarily the traits of heroes. But that’s neither here nor there: I’m not going to critique Allison by saying this his definition of heroism doesn’t match my own. Instead, I’m going to critique him by saying that, by his own definition, the heroes he profiles aren’t actually heroes.

Tiger Woods is a very good golfer who cheated on his wife with a number of other women. Can it really be said that he’s “smart, strong, resilient, selfless, caring, charismatic, reliable, and inspiring”? Though I wouldn’t personally use any of these words to describe him, it’s clear that some people look up to Woods — or, they might have when he was better at golf and wasn’t known all over the world for cheating on his wife. That said, the real question at the heart of the Woods example is whether or not it’s heroic to play golf very well. I submit that it isn’t.

Some people really enjoy Justin Beiber’s music and/or think he’s attractive. But again, I’d like someone to make the case that he’s “smart, strong, resilient, selfless, caring, charismatic, reliable, and inspiring.” He’s famous, certainly, but so are Paris Hilton and the Unabomber. Does a measure of fame equate with heroism? Again, I submit that it doesn’t.

And Secretariat? That’s a horse. Secretariat ran around a track. If there was no track and no jockey, then Secretariat would have run around somewhere else. Horses run; it’s what they do. This particular horse was faster than other horses. Did people look up to Secretariat? Almost certainly not. Did they enjoy watching this horse do what horses generally do. Sure. Is that heroic? Not in any way.

Frankly, to pretend that the people (and animals) who are featured on Allison’s website are heroes throws Allison’s entire project into doubt. By and large, these are not people who make the sorts of choices we want others to emulate (and, of course, the animals aren’t making choices at all). They’re generally not risking anything or helping others; in some cases, they’re actually hurting others. Mostly, they’re just famous. Allison has gotten all sorts of attention for his work, precisely because the pop culture nature of his examples are positively begging for people to read what he’s written. But the idea that Allison has written must-read work on heroism makes things much more challenging for others who are teaching and writing about heroism. The people he chooses to profile generally aren’t heroic, but far worse is that he tries to defend those choices by appealing to the relativistic notion that heroism is entirely in the eye of the beholder.

journalofajournalist: …and The Onion for the win,...

Fri, 25 May 2012 14:30:00 -0500

journalofajournalist:

…and The Onion for the win, forever.

Tl;dr: All 10 ways are “Revolutionary Terror.”

(via TheNoobYorker)

When Did We Get Old?

Fri, 25 May 2012 08:38:47 -0500

I went out for dinner last night with one of my very best friends from college and his family; then, after his kids got ready for bed, he and I went out for a drink to catch up a bit.

As the evening was beginning to wind down, after we’d talked about all of the “old person” things in our lives — like work, kids, mortgages, day care policies, and even life insurance — we both mentioned that we don’t really feel like we’ve gotten old.

Even though we’d been reflecting on events that happened 15 years ago, we still felt closer in age to college students than to people in their mid-40s. But it’s almost certainly true that college students think of us as very old men and it’s clear that we have more in common with 45 year olds than with 20 year olds today.

At what point will we feel as old as we are? Is old age something that just sneaks up on you? In other words, will I still feel like I have a lot in common with — and a lot to say to — college students when I’m 60?

The Conservative Fantasy History of Civil Rights

Thu, 24 May 2012 14:15:39 -0500

The other day, Justin Green (approvingly?) quoted Kevin Williamson’s piece on the excellent conservative civil rights pedigree in the National Review Online:

“Even if the Republicans’ rise in the South had happened suddenly in the 1960s (it didn’t) and even if there were no competing explanation (there is), racism — or, more precisely, white southern resentment over the political successes of the civil-rights movement — would be an implausible explanation for the dissolution of the Democratic bloc in the old Confederacy and the emergence of a Republican stronghold there. That is because those southerners who defected from the Democratic party in the 1960s and thereafter did so to join a Republican party that was far more enlightened on racial issues than were the Democrats of the era, and had been for a century. There is no radical break in the Republicans’ civil-rights history: From abolition to Reconstruction to the anti-lynching laws, from the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments to the Civil Rights Act of 1875 to the Civil Rights Acts of 1957, 1960, and 1964, there exists a line that is by no means perfectly straight or unwavering but that nonetheless connects the politics of Lincoln with those of Dwight D. Eisenhower. And from slavery and secession to remorseless opposition to everything from Reconstruction to the anti-lynching laws, the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Amendments, the Civil Rights Act of 1875, and the Civil Rights Acts of 1957 and 1960, there exists a similarly identifiable line connecting John Calhoun and Lyndon Baines Johnson. Supporting civil-rights reform was not a radical turnaround for congressional Republicans in 1964, but it was a radical turnaround for Johnson and the Democrats.”

Green then wrote:

I suspect, at bottom, that his point is plausible if you stretch a few definitions and stories.

Williamson’s piece has been discussed by a number of people since then, including by Scott Lemieux at the Lawyers, Guns & Money blog, who awarded Williamson “Revisionist Hack of the Day” honors, citing Jonathan Chait’s delightful take-down of the “conservative fantasy history of civil rights” as he built to this conclusion:

Does this National Review article about how conservatives are the real supporters of civil rights even mention the National Review’s contemporaneous position on civil rights? I think you know the answer. Of course, if you define civil rights so that Jesse Helms can be a supporter, it’s a pretty big tent…

Yes, indeed, that would be quite the definitional stretch …

Do human rights really exist?

Thu, 24 May 2012 08:38:54 -0500

Do human rights really exist?:

About a month ago, Will Self authored a piece for the BBC News Magazine critiquing the whole idea of human rights. I pulled out this particularly telling quote:

[T]he only situation in which human rights could truly obtain would be one where an independent global judiciary, duly and constitutionally constituted by the sovereign will of all humanity, was able to judge violators who had been arrested by an equally incorruptible international police force.

Does anyone actually believe this to be true?

To put it another way, does anyone believe that their domestic rights don’t exist because the local police aren’t incorruptible or because not every violator of the law is brought to justice. Let’s say my bicycle is stolen and the police are unable to arrest the culprit; does this mean that my right to private property doesn’t actually exist?

Or, to put this still another way, does Self not know about the International Criminal Court and the trials underway there of those who have abused human rights on a pretty grand scale? He does not mention the Court once.

I suspect the vast majority of people think it’s unfortunate that human rights aren’t better protected. But it’s also my guess that most people don’t believe this invalidates the idea of human rights.

When you think of the idea of human rights, do you think only of the problem of their enforceability? In other words, how troubled are you that not every human rights violation is punished, that states continue to pursue their own self-interest at the expense of the international human rights regime, and that there’s no global police force to round up violators? Self never actually explains why an enforceability problem entirely negates the existence of the rights. Instead, he simply highlights what everyone already knows:

[T]he Security Council of the United Nations is hamstrung both by its inability to intervene in the internal affairs of sovereign states (Syria was, after all, itself an initial signatory of the 1948 declaration), and also by the little peccadilloes of its permanent members, two of which effectively deny their citizenship democratic rights - among others - and one of which has a somewhat dubious record when it comes to torture and legalised execution.

Self acts as though he’s just discovered that it’s difficult to get anything done at the UN Security Council and that — unbelievably! — there’s hypocrisy amongst UN member states. But this isn’t actually the challenge to the idea of human rights.

The real challenge, I would say, is that a fair number of people who might come across Self’s thoughts on human rights are very glad to see the Security Council hamstrung over Syria. They don’t think that anyone should intervene in the affairs of others … because they actually don’t believe that there’s any such thing as human rights. I’m thinking here of all the people who were apoplectic about foreign intervention in Libya, even as the Libyans whose lives were in danger were asking for precisely such an intervention.

The relativism about the idea of human rights at the heart of their apoplexy, — which is especially dominant amongst good-hearted progressives in the Global North (where civil and political rights are already pretty secure) — needs to be addressed before we’ll get very far in actually prosecuting or, even better, preventing human rights abuses around the world. If more and more people choose to believe that there’s no such thing as human rights, it will be less and less likely that violators will be prosecuted and then Self will surely be proved right.

Governor urges public vote on gay bias laws

Wed, 23 May 2012 13:23:33 -0500

Governor urges public vote on gay bias laws:

Nebraska’s governor says city ordinances barring discrimination against gay and transgender people should be put to public votes.

Gov. Dave Heineman on Tuesday cited a recent opinion from the state attorney general’s office that said cities would have to amend their charters to offer protections to groups not covered by state law.

Governor Heineman claims that he’s just repeating an opinion from the AG’s office … but in reality what he’s doing is disguising his own position against extending anti-discrimination protection to gays and lesbians. That position, ultimately, is that questions about whether it’s acceptable to discriminate should be decided by a majority of the populace.

I understand that some people don’t like lgbtq individuals; they don’t want them to get married, adopt children, live near them, work in their offices, or look at them on the street. They think they’re icky. They might not feel the same way about Latinos, or African-Americans, or Asians, or Jews, or Mormons, or Catholics, or whomever … but they also might.

And the position of Nebraska’s governor is that a) this is perfectly fine and b) if enough people feel this way, then discrimination against minorities groups is not only acceptable but also the right course of action.

In other words, he seems content to say that whether or not it’s acceptable to discriminate against some group or other should be determined by 51% of the people who turn up to vote. But, frankly, I find it hard to believe that Governor Heineman would agree to this statement if we were talking about discrimination toward any other group of people.

"Colleges and universities are like a museum. They’re filled with all this beautiful art, but someone..."

Wed, 23 May 2012 08:59:09 -0500

““Colleges and universities are like a museum. They’re filled with all this beautiful art, but someone has to turn on the light. If no one turns on the light, nothing else matters.””

- After reading this piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education [gated, sadly], my new mantra is student engagement:

There was an identifiable moment in which a faculty member created a spark in them; students became energized or excited by a topic, an idea, or a discipline. In those moments, he said, a faculty member conveyed to the student that he or she could perform on the collegiate level.

[…]

In many cases, all it takes is a faculty member to have a few well-timed interactions with a student, perhaps during office hours or in class. Such moments, he said, trigger something in students, whether it is a desire to learn or try harder, or it convinces them that they belong on campus:

“It is clear from their interviews that something changes quickly, meaningfully, and for the better.”

I’m now thinking about changing a bunch of the assignments in my classes. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do, but I’m thinking about doing away with the medium-length essays — which cause a great deal of angst and which don’t offer opportunities for much revision — in favor of shorter, more dynamic writing assignments.

Students have done really well with a certain style of blogging-as-writing-assignment in the recent past, for example, but I wonder if it makes sense to have students create blogs as the central writing element in an ancient political philosophy course.

I’ll be curious to see what readers think.

Upon Boarding a Flight: A Two Minute Play in One Act

Tue, 22 May 2012 19:54:41 -0500

Gate agent: “Sir, that bag is much too big to be a carry-on.”

Me: “Is it? That’s the first time anyone has ever said that. And it always fits in the overhead bin.”

Gate agent: “Oh, that’s impossible; it’s not even close. I should charge you $25 to check it.”

Me: “OK.” [shoulder shrug]

Gate agent: “I won’t, this time.”

Me: “So, you mean it will fit, then.”

Gate agent: “[…]”

Me: “You have a nice afternoon.”

Exeunt.

Every year, students tell me that racism isn’t the same...

Tue, 22 May 2012 12:18:00 -0500

Every year, students tell me that racism isn’t the same sort of problem that it once was. Twitter, though, is swiftly becoming one-stop shopping for anyone who’s looking for quotable racists to prove these students wrong:

The Jefferson Parish School Board has been under fire recently: civil rights organization Southern Poverty Law Center filed a complaint alleging that the school system “sends a disproportionate number of black and disabled students to alternative schools to languish for months.” Now the group is targeting Jefferson Parish for employing a school psychologist who has posted a slew of racially charged comments online.

Mark Traina works with the same alternative schools to which so many black and disabled students have been relegated. On his Twitter account, Traina says his interests are “politics, the economy, reading and expressing [his] opinion.” But his opinions are especially problematic given the fact that he’s one of the people responsible for placing students in alternative schools.

More here (HT: Matt Langdon).

Kevin Bleyer hates Nebraska; or, he hates it at least enough...

Tue, 22 May 2012 10:40:14 -0500

Kevin Bleyer hates Nebraska; or, he hates it at least enough that he wrote a whole book chapter about how it shouldn’t be a state anymore.

I once drove through Nebraska, via I-80, days after my girlfriend broke up with me, on a self-imposed road trip from Los Angeles to Cedar Rapids to find my brother’s shoulder and cry on it. It is a long, straight, hypnotically boring drive that not only gave me ample time to think about the loss, but also put my recent heartbreak in much-needed perspective.

It could be worse, I realized. I could live here.

Cold comfort, perhaps, but comfort nonetheless. And so, for providing the enforced monotony that only a dull road trip can provide, and the bleak void to which to compare my own relatively full life, I am grateful to the state of Nebraska. Nebraska has a special place in my heart.

It has no place, however, on a map of the United States.

[…]

There are more Americans in prison than in Nebraska. And not for nothing, but as I drove past endless rows of cornstalks, I couldn’t help but think: What’s the difference? Nebraska, whose official state motto is “Equality Before the Law,” nonetheless feels like a punishment for a crime. And like a criminal, I whiled away the hours (or was it days?) thinking up mottoes that better apply: “Nebraska — a great place to serve some time.” “Nebraska — if you lived here, you’d be bored by now.” “Nebraska — Canada’s Mexico!”

Sure, the argument could be made that Nebraska is in fact an idyllic land full of picturesque cities with enviable small towns steeped in small-town values personified by some of the loveliest Americans to grace the planet — and, I confess, in my wildest dreams I often fantasize about living among them in such a glorious place — but let’s be honest: It’s also a lifeblood-sucking leech on our body politic. Yes, my fellow citizens, despite what the original Constitution of the United States says about the qualifications for statehood and the guarantee of representation in Congress, by every measure that truly matters in America (bigness, crowdedness, awesomeness, Texasness), Nebraska doesn’t deserve its star on the American flag.

We get it, Kevin; you’re really glad that you don’t live here. But you know what? I asked the thirty-six other people who live in this state and we all decided that you’re not welcome here. So even if you did want to live here, we all voted and we decided you can’t. And the vote was not close.

And one more thing:

Do you like eating corn or soybeans or beef? If so, we’re sorry to say that you’ll have to start buying it from another state. We’re officially not selling to you.

It’s official: we’re having a girl!!!

Mon, 21 May 2012 17:34:47 -0500

It’s official: we’re having a girl!!!

Racism, George Zimmerman, and the Death Penalty

Mon, 21 May 2012 13:08:00 -0500

About a week ago, I wrote about all the people who took to the internet to rejoice at the possibility that George Zimmerman might be charged capitally for Trayvon Martin’s murder.

Today, I received the personal confirmation of what I wrote in my original post, namely that “Anyone who opposes the idea that Zimmerman is a monster who needs to be tortured and/or killed is immediately accused of derailing the conversation or of being a racist who supports Zimmerman.”

In other words, I’ve just been notified that I’m a racist.

All of this provides me with an excellent opportunity to write a bit more about this nonsense that supporting some executions makes one a good person while opposing all executions makes one a racist.

Here’s my critic:

It’s racist for a white person to dictate how PoC, especially Black people, should react to racism.

It would be further racist application of the death penalty when Troy Davis (among others) was executed (as he was) if George Zimmerman is allowed to live. Because of the way societal forces are aligned, a push to prevent Zimmerman’s execution is far, far more likely to succeed than the push to prevent, say, Davis’s or Reggie Clemons’s executions.

This means that any push to prevent Zimmerman’s execution is a push to continue applying the death penalty in a racist way, and not a push to end the racist application of the death penalty. Because Zimmerman is protected by white supremacy ingrained into US culture and application of US law, stopping his execution will be of no benefit to the PoC (mostly, specifically Black) victims of the death penalty. Preventing Zimmerman’s execution will only have the effect of upholding white supremacy. Zimmerman being allowed to live does not bring us any closer to a world or even country without executions than executing him would.

Holding to a principle of how we should act in a perfect world does not always advance us closer to it. So, yes, putting the principle that there should be no death penalty above anti-racism is a racist act. I, too, oppose the death penalty. But anyone whose anti-death-penalty politics are not firmly grounded in anti-racism is no comrade of mine.

First of all, let me make perfectly clear that I’m not telling anyone how to feel about George Zimmerman. If you feel that George Zimmerman deserves to die, that’s fine; lots of people feel that way. But our justice system shouldn’t cater to people’s feelings; it ought to be dispassionate.

When we say someone deserves to die, what we’re saying is that an offense has been committed that is so far beyond the range of normal behavior that we can’t even begin to imagine the worldview of the offender and we can’t imagine continuing to occupy the same plane of existence.

I don’t want to be read as saying these feelings are abnormal. Indeed, it’s quite normal to want to express our solidarity with the families of murder victims, make clear our outrage at the terrible crime that has been committed, ensure our safety, and punish these offenders for what they’ve done. But I think there’s a disconnect between these normal feelings and the desire to punish in a manner that causes the most suffering and that strips the offender of his human dignity.

Indeed, here’s a brief exerpt from my original post:

[W]hen so many people have prematurely tried, convicted, and sentenced George Zimmerman to death with such joy, I’m reminded once again how far removed we are from a time when we might conceive of justice as more than simply the paying back of violence with violence. When we gloat over the dead bodies we’ve managed to pile up — regardless of the reason that led to those deaths — we’re really celebrating the basest part of our nature.

[…]

Personally, I’d like to see Americans reflecting on the idea of justice and the proper role of compassion, on why corpses are the only possible validation for so many of us, on what a society that applauds a body count is ultimately missing, on the prejudices and privilege that allow us to cheer and sing when others die … but we’re so very far away from doing any of those things right now because, despite all the killing that’s happening all around us and in our names, our bloodlust somehow still hasn’t been sated.

I’m not clear on why writing about the difference between justice and vengeance amounts to racist or derailing behavior, and I suspect that my critics aren’t clear on it either. The entirety of their argument amounts to the claim that any response that deviates from their feelings, or from the feelings of some people of color, is a racist one that derails people of color from having the conversation they want to have.

From their perspective, I ought to be focusing on people of color who face execution (I do, all the time) and on the racism of the death penalty (again, there are fifteen pages of death penalty posts for you to look through). They claim that opposing the death penalty for George Zimmerman (who isn’t considered a person of color by my critics because he looks white) “is a push to continue applying the death penalty in a racist way, and not a push to end the racist application of the death penalty.” In other words, because Troy Davis was executed — and that was racist — then we must also execute George Zimmerman, or we will be reenforcing the racism of the death penalty.

This is nonsense.

The death penalty is racist. Full stop. People of color are disproportionately represented on death row and an offender is much more likely to be tried capitally in a case with a white victim. But putting more white people on death row or putting to death more offenders who kill people of color in prominent cases like this one isn’t going to solve what is ultimately a systemic problem.

Let me reiterate my position, then: No one ought to be strapped down and poisoned to death by the government, regardless of the color of their skin or the color of their victim’s skin. The death penalty system as a whole is racist, arbitrary, and unfair. I oppose it in all cases, not in a manner that picks and chooses cases that make me feel better or worse.

This week on The Hero Report podcast, we discuss the heroism (or...

Mon, 21 May 2012 09:04:21 -0500

This week on The Hero Report podcast, we discuss the heroism (or lack thereof) in the blockbuster, The Avengers. Did the “hit them over the head with a hammer” technique work for the heroic themes, or did it render them useless?

Want to make the podcast portable? Subscribe via iTunes (audio-only).

Cameron Todd Willingham Exoneration Was Written But Never Filed By Texas Judge

Sun, 20 May 2012 11:46:16 -0500

Cameron Todd Willingham Exoneration Was Written But Never Filed By Texas Judge:

We’ve known for quite some time that our justice system is capable of condemning innocent men to death. But some people — like Antonin Scalia, George W. Bush, and Rick Perry — continued to claim the system worked so well that it was always able to save them from execution. With the all of this information about Carlos DeLuna and Cameron Todd Willingham, it’s hard to believe that anyone will continue to make such a claim going forward. Except we know, of course, that they will.

Many years ago now, I bristled at the plot of The Life of David Gale precisely because it implied that, since innocent people really aren’t executed, opponents of the death penalty would need to go so far as to enter into an elaborate conspiracy to make it happen.

That, of course, is demonstrably false:

A Texas judge who reviewed the controversial 2004 execution of Cameron Todd Willingham planned to posthumously exonerate the father who was put to death for killing his three daughters in a house fire.

Scientific experts who debunked the arson evidence used against Willingham at his 1992 trial and a jailhouse witness who recanted his shaky testimony convinced District Court Judge Charlie Baird in 2010 that “Texas wrongfully convicted” him. But Baird’s order clearing Willingham’s name never became official, because a higher court halted the posthumous inquiry while it considered whether the judge had authority to examine the capital case.

[…]

Baird’s intended order never came to light because the court of appeals criticized his handling of the case and prevented him from resuming work on it before he left the bench at the end of 2010 after choosing not to seek re-election. No one asked him for it after the court of appeals blocked him, he said.

Baird, now an attorney in private practice, said he was moved to share the document with HuffPost after reading about Carlos DeLuna, a Texan who a Columbia University team said this week may have been wrongly executed in 1989.

In 2006, Justice Scalia wrote that there hasn’t been “a single case — not one — in which it is clear that a person was executed for a crime he did not commit. If such an event had occurred in recent years, we would not have to hunt for it; the innocent’s name would be shouted from the rooftops.”

When do we suppose Scalia will be prepared to shout his error from the rooftops?

Both Glenn Loury and Ann Althouse have gay sons. And, in this...

Sat, 19 May 2012 14:55:00 -0500

Both Glenn Loury and Ann Althouse have gay sons. And, in this clip, both of them argue that we shouldn’t consider opposition to same-sex marriage to be akin to bigotry. Loury goes a few steps farther, in fact, and claims that a charge of bigotry really amounts to demagogic politics and that people who oppose same-sex marriage on religious or cultural grounds are morally serious and ought not to be dismissed out of hand.

But it’s never entirely clear why Loury and Althouse believe that the views these people espouse are so morally serious or why we ought to refrain from referring to their condemnation of homosexuality as bigotry. From listening to them, my sense is that their argument rests on the presumption that religious people are morally serious and, as such, they reflect on the tenets of their faiths before coming to their conclusions about matters like same-sex marriage.

That’s all well and good, if it’s true. But it doesn’t explain why we shouldn’t think of it as bigotry. That someone believes something to be true and arrives at his or her belief in a serious manner doesn’t exempt him or her from being challenged on that belief, especially when that belief might impact the lives of others.

Let’s go a few steps down the religious path and see what happens. After all, I attend a weekly religious service, I associate with many of my co-religionist, and I observe many of the strictures of my religion in my daily life. And my religion, Judaism, is one that seems to explicitly condemn homosexuality; indeed, it’s the Hebrew Bible to which people turn when they’re looking for a religious justification for their opposition to same-sex marriage and homosexuality more generally (even though the majority of these people don’t pay much attention to any of the other dictates of the Hebrew Bible).

But Jews are divided on the question of same-sex marriage, with most Orthodox authorities opposing it and most Reform authorities supporting it. Conservative authorities are divided, with some in support and some in opposition. The Hebrew Bible says that one should not lie with a man as one lies with a woman … but the Hebrew Bible also says, for example, that the death penalty should be employed as a punishment in hundreds of circumstances (from homicide to children who curse their parents) yet the vast majority of Jewish authorities oppose capital punishment. After much study and debate, religious authorities have found that the text can be read in more ways than one. And that’s why it seems to me that we can take issue with anyone who claims that their religion mandates their opposition to same-sex marriage or their condemnation of homosexuality. The Orthodox, after all, are not agitating for the ability to resume stoning their children.

In other words, Jews have options (and I presume that Christians and Muslims do too). Despite the injunction against homosexuality in Leviticus, there is no need for a Jew to join a congregation that condemns homosexuality or even makes gays and lesbians feel in any way unwelcome. And so, as a Jew, I gravitate toward congregations that are welcoming to gays and lesbians and toward rabbis who speak out in favor of equal rights and equal treatment.

Religions aren’t monolithic; if people really are involved in deep spiritual reflection on the matter of homosexuality, then they will surely be able to find an interpretation of their religious texts that allows for the kind of evolution that President Obama described. This doesn’t mean I’m not serious about practicing Judaism; it means I’m serious about finding a way to reconcile my belief in the teachings of Judaism with my belief that people should be treated equally. But, obviously, one must actually have both of these beliefs.

What do we call someone who either fails to consider the alternative teaching of his or her religion or rejects that teaching because it doesn’t lead to continued condemnation of gays and lesbians, someone — in other words — who doesn’t actually have both a religious belief and a belief in equality?

With apologies to Loury and Althouse, I think I have to call it bigotry.