I'm coming to believe more and more that one of the marks of maturity is the ability to distinguish between one's ethical sensibilities and aesthetic sensibilities. Far too many people conflate the two, and insist that anything they find aesthetically offensive - be it the Bush administration, Wal-Mart, or consumerism - are immoral, rather than just unpleasant.
Beauty, on a personal level, really is in the eye of the beholder. For many people, Wal-Mart is an aesthetic offense. They like little shops and downtown areas, they don't like suburban sprawl and gigantic parking lots. The thing to remember is that whether or not you like something doesn't automatically have anything to do with whether or not the thing in question is moral or not.
The fact that millions of people die from starvation every year does not automatically mean that there it is a moral problem for them to do so. People die. It happens. It's always happened. It will always happen. In fact, it's the rule, not the exception. The past two hundred years are the first time that any significant portion of the human population hasn't been in immediate danger of starvation. We're talking two out of, at minimum, sixty centuries. People die from disease every day. That doesn't mean that there's anything immoral about people dying from disease. It isn't pretty, but it isn't immoral. But again, the fact that we don't like people to die from starvation or disease doesn't somehow mean that there's an immorality involved. I'm not arguing that these things are right, just, and moral, only that the aesthetics of the situation doesn't enter in to any discussion of the morality of the situation.
Conversely, there are plenty of things that are commonly perceived as beautiful that are, in fact, immoral. Various, ahem, "extracurricular" sexual activities would fall in this category. They are attractive, appealing, and desirable, but that doesn't affect the underlying morality of the situtation. There's also a certain aesthetic appeal to the equality and brotherhood of man, but that doesn't make either of them true or right.
It's imperative that people learn to make these distinctions. Too many people are wandering around with the idea that if they don't like something that there must needs be something morally wrong with it. Introducing aesthetics to the discussion of any moral issue is like sticking a magnet next to your moral compass: it gives crazy results.
Here's a non-PC question to ask: why do we even have remedial instruction in public schools? There was a Wa Po op-ed on the subject yesterday.
If a kid is having trouble keeping up in math, why make him take algebra? Send him to trade school and get the kid a job. Why do we spend millions of dollars on improving the worst of our students' scores from failing to barely adequate when we could be spending money taking our good and best students' scores from adequate or superior to superior or outstanding?
Is having an only marginally more literate populace worth missing out on the next Milton? Are incremental improvements in average math scores worth having the next Newton drop out of high school for lack of interest? Wouldn't society as a whole be better if we made sure that those people who could actually use an education get one instead of forcing people who aren't interested to spend 12 years "learning" things that won't benefit them anyway?
We're graduating college seniors - not high school seniors, mind you, but college seniors - who are barely literate. Got to love those athletic scholarships (just kidding! [kind of]). Why not focus our resources where they're going to do the most good?
The Economist has a fascinating piece on the role of wheat in human culture and diet. It's a good read.
Turns out that genetically modified foods were first introduced because they were healthier and more nutritious than their organic counterparts, and that GM has been going on as long as there's been agriculture. Not a single grain of wheat you buy in the store today - organic or not - is free from genetic modifications. The reason is that grain that is grown by humans for agricultural purposes is entirely dependent on us for propagation: the heavy seeds do not have a natural dispersion method, and must be planted and cultivated artifically.
Cool.
The EU, it seems, is way behind on implementing the changes they agreed to as part of the infamous Kyoto Protocols. Apparently they're finding the Protocols costly and/or difficult to obey.
Which suggests the question, "Is it better to promise and renege, or to refuse to promise at all?"
The UN spent about $590 million of tsunami relief. Up to one third of that was on overhead: administration, staff, etc.
The sheer scale of the bureaucratic incompatence - or should we say compatence, for what else to bureaucracies exist for except to perpetuate their own existence? - is boggling. They managed to swindle about $200 million in donated funds.
No wonder lefties have such a benighted economic perspective: they spend their lives living of the largesse of others. Can't really think of a better way of instilling the idea that you don't have to work for a living.
I love Hitch. Here's his take on Christmas.
If I have to hear "Santa, Baby", "Happy Holidays", "The Christmas Shoes", "It's Cold Outside", or "Where Are You, Christmas?" one more time, I may just impale myself on a holly bough.
No, not the band, though I've been on quite the Yes kick recently. No, I'm referring to the fact that a New York state court judge has found the TWU local 100 in contempt of court and fined them $1 million per day while they're on strike. The reason? It's illegal for government employees to strike.
Anything that kicks organized labor in the teeth is okay by me.
I'm not a big fan of socialized, nationalized healthcare. But one thing the Brits do have over us is that they'll refuse to offer expensive treatments with dubious chances for improvement. The NHS about to no longer offer new prescriptions for a drastically expensive drug used to treat Alzheimer's, arguing that the benefits are more than outweighed by the drug's cost.
Now a hospital in Lincoln is being refused treatment until he stops his smoking habit for six months. His condition is not immediately life-threatening.
Similar things go on in this country, but only in much, much narrower circumstances, e.g. if you're an alcoholic you won't come in at the top of anyone's liver transplant waiting list. But generally, the government and/or private insurance companies will pony up for any treatment no matter how ineffectual, unproven, or expensive.
It's time we stopped this insane practice and recognize that we could spend the entire GDP on health care and just about the same number of people would die from just about the same kinds of things. People get sick, and people die. The fact that we can spend $1 trillion on health care doesn't mean that we should.
Yesterday, the House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) announced that, and I quote, "There is no one Democratic voice . . . and there is no one Democratic position" on the war.
Talk about stating the obvious. Generally, when a political party doesn't have a clue about what it stands for, this is considered a bad thing. But now it's touted as virture? What do we pay these people for? I think this says it all. If you can't win an election running against a President under fire for mismanaging a vaguely defined war while slashing taxes and boosting spending... I really don't know what to say. You just suck.
It's been passed all over the net, but Dave Barry does seem to have it right:
"The Democrats seem to be basically nicer people, but they have demonstrated time and again that they have the management skills of celery. They're the kind of people who'd stop to help you change a flat, but would somehow manage to set your car on fire. I would be reluctant to entrust them with a Cuisinart, let alone the economy."
We need a genuine opposition party. The Democrats don't count.
The riots are spreading, only this time it isn't underclass Muslim immigrants protesting their living conditions, but up to 5,000 white Australians assaulting people they perceived to be of Arabic origin.
It had to happen eventually.
I definitely just spent the past 32 hours at work. Showed up at 2:00PM on Thursday. Left at 10:15PM on Friday.
I want single malt Scotch.
I generally think that the esteemed Mr. Sullivan's political insights are quite astute. I've recently come to disagree with him in his position about the treatment of terrorists, at least in emphasis if not in the essential content of his argument, and for similar reasons, I find myself entirely in disagreement with him in his views on homosexuality.
Andrew seems to make an argument based on his own sense of ethics, but makes little effort to reconcile that with Scripture or church doctrine. Sex is clearly something God cares about, given New Testament teaching on the fate of the sexually immoral. Thus, sexual immorality is something that should concern us as well. And if you look in Scripture for any kind of teaching on what might constitute sexual immorality, I think you'll find that homosexuality quite clearly falls into that category. Until Andrew deals with this, I won't be able to find any of his arguments particularly compelling.
It's not so much that his argument is more pragmatic than theological. I've a soft spot in my heart for the pragmatic argument, and am sensitive to the argument that if a moral policy is producing counter-productive results, then there is good reason to question at least the implementation, if not the policy as such. My real object is that he doesn't seem to acknowledge the theological issues at all, nor does he evidence any measure of acceptance for the idea that Scripture may require things of us that we don't like or don't understand. I'm certainly keenly aware of that. He's certainly got down the idea that behavior and inclinations don't affect one's status as a human being made in God's image, but he fails to get the idea that sinful behavior and/or inclinations have consequences, which may include exclusion from the priesthood. Thus, his argument is essentially aesthetic, not ethical, metaphysical, or practical. And aesthetics is no way to determine any kind of policy, public or private.
I'd tie this to the argument about torture by asserting that Mr. Sullivan's argument seems to be essentially aesthetic there as well. First of all, he has not - nor have any of the anti-torture crowd - dealt with the assertion that terrorists do not qualify for the protections of civilization as they have willfully violated the laws of civilization. Showing no proper respect for persons and their dignity, they may be treated in kind. This has not been successfully answered by Sullivan or, as far as I can tell, by anyone who opposes Guantonamo etc.
The core of the argument seems to be "we shouldn't treat people that way", but there doesn't seem to be any real substance to the argument beyond an expression of personal conviction. As such, it's a largely empty argument that consists of posturing more than argument.
Occasionally, Sullivan will point out that torture may be counter-productive. This is certainly an argument worth hearing, but it doesn't seem particularly conclusive, one way or the other. Violence has, after all, solved more problems more conclusively than any other method in history. Just ask the Trojans or Persians. Once you get away from the idea that the state is supposed to have anything to do with the cultivation of morality, you have a far more circumspect view of the use of various unpleasantries.
The WSJ is running a piece in today's edition with that title.
Money quote:
"[T]here's no getting around the fact that somewhere out there, millions of people are spending billions of dollars on what Wal-Mart puts on its shelves. No one is making them do it. To the extent that mom-and-pop stores are threatened by Wal-Mart, it's because the same people who supposedly so value their Main Street hardware store find that Wal-Mart's selection, or prices, or parking lot--something about it--is preferable. Wal-Mart can't make mom and pop shut down the shop any more than it can make customers walk through the doors or pull out their wallets. You don't sell $300 billion a year worth of anything without doing something right."
They're not making all that much money. CitiBank posted five times the profits with one third the sales. But get this: lefty types cry foul when companies make a lot of money, e.g. Exxon-Mobil's recent record profits, and cry foul when companies fight to keep costs to consumers low, e.g. Wal-Mart. Conclusion? They want things to be free. They'll find good company in pre-schools everywhere, with people who share their level of economic insight.
