I beg the forgivenss of my more scientifically inclined readers for this very unscientific rant.
This morning I woke up for a typical Sunday morning: a little poker, leftover pizza for breakfast, and the NFL pregame shows for my weekly doze of prime male competitiveness. As team sports go, football is tough to beat, a sort of violent chess, and I relish the few escapist minutes I'm allowed to enjoy it.
So what, I wondered, was going on when in the middle of my ESPN telecast I found myself watching Kermit the Frog singing it's not easy being green. I turn to another channel to find a discussion of Howie Long's wife calling the show and berating him about his tie. Last week I was subjected to some moronic skit about how Bret Favre was really a KGB agent.
Has everyone lost their minds? Has it become NFL View? Is this a subtle signal that you guys don't think football is as interesting as, well, I do? Call me a rigid absolutist if you must, but when I turn on a football show, I want to hear about football. I want to hear about injuries, strategies, personnel changes, playoff impications, and the proper technique for reading a zone or picking up a blitz. I do not give two drops of flying rodent droppings what the announcer's wives think of their ties. I do not care to see semi-creative performance art more befitting a junior high talent show. There are shows and channels that specialize in that sort of thing, and the people who want to see that are not only free to watch those shows instead, they are encouraged to do so. KEEP IT OUT OF MY FOOTBALL SHOWS.
I know it's a tough life guys, you who occupy those discussion chairs on Sunday mornings and in the broadcast booth on gameday. But could you please treat the sport, and your jobs, with the seriousness it deserves, and not pollute it with this fluff? One doesn't have to be boring to be substantive - Chris Berman has been pulling it off brilliantly for years. And sure, not everyone can be Chris Berman, but is it too much to ask that you try? We, your fans, and the fans of the game, appreciate it.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled scientific reading.
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Pelosi's Cowardice on Iraq
In 2006, the United States had a referendum on the war in Iraq, and the people spoke loudly and consistently at the polls: Get us out of there! As a consequence, Democrats were elected by the truckload in one of the worst beatings for a sitting president's party in recent memory.
Yet almost two years later, we are still in Iraq, with no end in sight, and the Democrats are still talking like the minority party, especially Nancy Pelosi. Her recent comments display a shocking cowardice, as she puts politics above doing what she and her party were put in power to do, with men and women far braver than she dying every day for nothing as a result. She knows the base is unhappy, and she has to deal with ever-more-vocal protesters at her door, and yet her words reveal a politico, not a leader:
"The war has eclipsed everything. And while I am very proud of the ratings that Democrats have on every issue you can name, I don't disagree with the public evaluation that we have not done well in ending this war"
Ratings? RATINGS? You were not placed 2 heart attacks from the presidency to collect ratings ma'am. You were put there to enact the will of the voters, which means ending the damned war. Yes your constituents are getting angry about you not doing so, and are likely to turn on you if you do not get your act together. Her response?
"I think it is a waste of time for them to go after Democratic members. They ought to just persuade Republican members who are representing areas that are opposed to the war," she said. "We said we would change the debate; we would fight to end the war. We never said we had the veto pen or the signature pen."
No, you control the purse strings, and that would be enough if you had the courage to do the right thing instead of playing politics. What Madam Speaker is doing here is simple politics. She knows the Republicans made this mess, and as long as the Democrats do nothing, and let the Republicans bumble on as they have, the Republicans will get the blame for whatever goes wrong, and it is only a matter of time before the situation gets completely out of control. Doing the right thing by getting us the hell out of there right now, risks the Democrats getting some dirt, blood and blame on their hands. So like a football team ahead with time running out, Pelosi and company keep kneeling on the ball, awaiting certain political victory, while brave people die. How many are likely to die? Consider this chilling statement:
"It is clear now that the Senate is not going to be able to do much to overcome the 60- vote barrier that would send a bill to the president's desk. But that does not mean the House will not move to … responsible, safe redeployment of our troops, hopefully to end by next year"
The end of next year?! Are you deranged Madam? People are dying in Iraq by the thousands every month, and you want to wait a year before doing anything? How convenient the timing, since that would be right after the 2008 elections, where Pelosi and company hope to have attained control of the White House as well via their inaction today.
No statement of Pelosi's illustrates this pussified attitude than this one:
She agreed with those who say the Iraq war is being fought without equality of sacrifice. But responding to recent legislative proposals for a war tax, she said, "I don't support a draft, and I don't support a war tax."
In other words, you admit there are things that are wrong, but you refuse to do anything about them. Why not a war tax? Why not pay now for what we choose to do with our government. Isn't tax and spend (as opposed to borrow and spend) the way of the Democrats? Why the sudden change of heart? Politics, pure politics.
"This isn't Democrats being concerned about the next election."
Yes it is Nancy, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. And don't complain any more about the reputation Democrats have of being soft. You earn it every day you dodge your responsibilities in Iraq.
Yet almost two years later, we are still in Iraq, with no end in sight, and the Democrats are still talking like the minority party, especially Nancy Pelosi. Her recent comments display a shocking cowardice, as she puts politics above doing what she and her party were put in power to do, with men and women far braver than she dying every day for nothing as a result. She knows the base is unhappy, and she has to deal with ever-more-vocal protesters at her door, and yet her words reveal a politico, not a leader:
"The war has eclipsed everything. And while I am very proud of the ratings that Democrats have on every issue you can name, I don't disagree with the public evaluation that we have not done well in ending this war"
Ratings? RATINGS? You were not placed 2 heart attacks from the presidency to collect ratings ma'am. You were put there to enact the will of the voters, which means ending the damned war. Yes your constituents are getting angry about you not doing so, and are likely to turn on you if you do not get your act together. Her response?
"I think it is a waste of time for them to go after Democratic members. They ought to just persuade Republican members who are representing areas that are opposed to the war," she said. "We said we would change the debate; we would fight to end the war. We never said we had the veto pen or the signature pen."
No, you control the purse strings, and that would be enough if you had the courage to do the right thing instead of playing politics. What Madam Speaker is doing here is simple politics. She knows the Republicans made this mess, and as long as the Democrats do nothing, and let the Republicans bumble on as they have, the Republicans will get the blame for whatever goes wrong, and it is only a matter of time before the situation gets completely out of control. Doing the right thing by getting us the hell out of there right now, risks the Democrats getting some dirt, blood and blame on their hands. So like a football team ahead with time running out, Pelosi and company keep kneeling on the ball, awaiting certain political victory, while brave people die. How many are likely to die? Consider this chilling statement:
"It is clear now that the Senate is not going to be able to do much to overcome the 60- vote barrier that would send a bill to the president's desk. But that does not mean the House will not move to … responsible, safe redeployment of our troops, hopefully to end by next year"
The end of next year?! Are you deranged Madam? People are dying in Iraq by the thousands every month, and you want to wait a year before doing anything? How convenient the timing, since that would be right after the 2008 elections, where Pelosi and company hope to have attained control of the White House as well via their inaction today.
No statement of Pelosi's illustrates this pussified attitude than this one:
She agreed with those who say the Iraq war is being fought without equality of sacrifice. But responding to recent legislative proposals for a war tax, she said, "I don't support a draft, and I don't support a war tax."
In other words, you admit there are things that are wrong, but you refuse to do anything about them. Why not a war tax? Why not pay now for what we choose to do with our government. Isn't tax and spend (as opposed to borrow and spend) the way of the Democrats? Why the sudden change of heart? Politics, pure politics.
"This isn't Democrats being concerned about the next election."
Yes it is Nancy, and you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. And don't complain any more about the reputation Democrats have of being soft. You earn it every day you dodge your responsibilities in Iraq.
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Worldwide Abortions on Decline due to Birth Control:Lancet Study Repudiates Abstinance Programs
In another blow to the faith-based communities evidence-free positions on birth control and abortion, two Lancet Medical studies show that abortions are on the decline worldwide, and that the relationship between use of birth control and abortions is a positive one:
"Two studies published on Friday show abortions are declining worldwide due to wider use of birth control practices...
The number of abortions fell most in developed countries where it is legal compared to poorer countries where it is largely banned and considered unsafe, the researchers said."
And what happens in countries where it is banned, as the Family Values crew would like it?
"'Each year, about 70,000 women die due to unsafe abortion and an additional five million suffer permanent or temporary disability,' Paul Van Look, director of the WHO's department of reproductive health and research, said in a statement."
Now there's a great family value: denying safe abortions so the mother of the family ends up dead or disabled. It's just one more fact for the faith-based crew to ignore.
"Two studies published on Friday show abortions are declining worldwide due to wider use of birth control practices...
The number of abortions fell most in developed countries where it is legal compared to poorer countries where it is largely banned and considered unsafe, the researchers said."
And what happens in countries where it is banned, as the Family Values crew would like it?
"'Each year, about 70,000 women die due to unsafe abortion and an additional five million suffer permanent or temporary disability,' Paul Van Look, director of the WHO's department of reproductive health and research, said in a statement."
Now there's a great family value: denying safe abortions so the mother of the family ends up dead or disabled. It's just one more fact for the faith-based crew to ignore.
Friday, October 12, 2007
Mona Charen on Fat and Global Warming: Not all Consensuses are Created Equal
Rich in irony, as Al Gore receives a Nobel Prize for his work on global warming, Mona Charen adds to the denialist list, with an argument that, boiled down to the essentials, amounts to "science has been wrong before, so we should assume it is wrong now." This is an argument that is horribly flawed logically. The premise is poorly defined, and the conclusion doesn't follow anyway. Yet this is heard so often in so many ways I thought it worth tackling in detail. This is not about global warming per se. It could apply to any finding of science that finds itself under attack with this argument.
The premise is poorly defined because saying "science was wrong" is too imprecise. Perfection is rarely attained, or required, in any field. Quantum physics sees to that. So the relevant measure of a theory is not whether it is wrong: for most theories we know that already. The relevant question is "How wrong is it?". Consider Newtonian physics. It says if I am travelling in a car going 40 mph, and throw a baseball another 70 mph, the ball will travel 110 mph relative to the earth. Believe it or not, this is wrong. Einstein showed with his theory of relativity that the ball would actually travel 109.99... mph. Too picky you say? Exactly. The question isn't "was Newton wrong?" The question is "How wrong was Newton?", and the answer is hardly wrong at all, and hardly wrong at all is a far better view than most any other.
So when someone says "science was wrong", the question is how wrong was it?. Right and wrong are relative. And for the most part, science is rarely substantively wrong, and it's errors tend to decrease in severity within a subject over time. Take the scientific consensus of opinion on the shape of the earth. It was, roughly: flat, spherical, oblately spherical, and slightly on the pear side of oblately spherical with a northern top. Notice that each error was smaller than the previous one (think in terms of average curvature per straight line distance), and that there is a pattern of sorts as it zooms in on reality. It does not oscillate wildly, as if one day we might discover that the earth is cube shaped. This, history clearly shows, is the pattern of science. Note also the historical pattern that while science makes errors, it is almost always science that corrects them. Creationists might trumpet the Piltdown hoax, but it was evolutionary scientists, not creationist hacks, that exposed it with evidence. Science, with apologies to Churchill, is the worst form of epistemology, except for all the others that have been tried.
Second, the conclusion of this horrid argument doesn't even follow if you grant the premise. So science has been wrong before? So what? Whether it is right or not now has to do with the evidence, not history. If LeBron James has missed 10 shots in a row, may we then conclude he will miss the next one as well (with a nod to Bayes), even in the face of evidence that he made it? Of course not.
So if Mona, or anyone else, is going to challenge the scientific consensus of anthropocentric global warming, she needs to do it with evidence, in the scientific literature, not in pop-science op-eds, with cries of persecution and logically poor rhetoric. Whatever science's track record of accuracy on science, it beats the track record of political hacks tenfold. What do you want to bet Mona is an evolution denier too? The two seem to run together. Funny coincidence that.
Charon's article focuses on an article in the New York Times which discusses the changing opinions of scientists regarding the supposed damaging effects of fat in our diet. As it is, the really sad thing about Mona's article is even if we dismissed all of the above, the case she tries to make still doesn't hold up. The situations between the current consensus on AGW and the former consensus on fatty foods (which I have not researched but will accept as stated for the sake of argument) are dissimilar in crucial ways her argument cannot survive.
The New York Times article focuses on a comment by then-Surgeon General C. Everett Koop:
"He introduced his report with these words: “The depth of the science base underlying its findings is even more impressive than that for tobacco and health in 1964.”
That was a ludicrous statement, as Gary Taubes demonstrates in his new book meticulously debunking diet myths, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” (Knopf, 2007). The notion that fatty foods shorten your life began as a hypothesis based on dubious assumptions and data; when scientists tried to confirm it they failed repeatedly. The evidence against Häagen-Dazs was nothing like the evidence against Marlboros.
It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After all, wasn’t it his job to express the scientific consensus? But that was the problem. Dr. Koop was expressing the consensus."
Right away there are glaring differences between this and AGW. AGW is not failing to be confirmed by scientists. The findings are being confirmed repeatedly, and in multiple disciplines. Second, on what was the supposed scientific consensus on fatty foods based if scientists were unable to confirm it experimentally? If it was simply an unconfirmed hypothesis lacking peer-reviewed evidence, then it doesn't qualify as science. That some scientists may have held this to be so as a personal belief is entirely irrelevant to a judgement of the scientific process, as their opinions on politics and sports teams are. No peer-reviewed articles supporting the hypothesis, no scientific consensus, period.
So it was a popular consensus they had, and that is simply a case of group think, or as the article calls it, cascading:
"He was caught in what social scientists call a cascade.
We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” usually votes for the right answer. But suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison, they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person gets it wrong.
If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go along just because she assumes the first two together know more than she does. Thus begins an “informational cascade” as one person after another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong.
Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better..."
OK, point taken. But this is not how the scientific process works, and in fact, far from a condemnation of the scientific method, this is an affirmation of the importance of replicable experimentation. It is also worth nothing again, that the truth about a fatty diet was ultimately determined by scientists, not the cynics. It certainly wasn't, and rarely is, found by skeptics working outside their field, as science critics almost always are. And finally, this is not in any way a parallel to AGW, which was not something promoted by a single individual in a position of political power, as the fatty food theory apparently was, but has grown little by battled little from experimentation all over the world.
In a final confirmation of Charon's crankiness, she ends her criticism of scientists supposedly accepting something without sufficient science by, well, accepting hypotheses promoted by Bjorn Lomborg, non-climatologist (denialists are almost universally from fields other than the ones they criticize), and favorite son of the AGW denialists. And of course, he makes his case, just as the HIV denialists and evolution denialists do, in popular books, while avoiding the scientific literature. Charon ends with:
"The consensus is wrong on global warming. Wonder when The New York Times will figure it out? In the meanwhile, Lomborg points the way toward clear analysis."
Really Mona? And your basis for trusting a single individual over the worldwide scientific community is what exactly? Simple: he is telling her what she wants to hear, and her conservative sycophants will no doubt repeat his and her claims, sans understanding, as they have to this point, which creates in that little political subculture the illusion that they have science to back their views. Now THAT'S a cascade.
The premise is poorly defined because saying "science was wrong" is too imprecise. Perfection is rarely attained, or required, in any field. Quantum physics sees to that. So the relevant measure of a theory is not whether it is wrong: for most theories we know that already. The relevant question is "How wrong is it?". Consider Newtonian physics. It says if I am travelling in a car going 40 mph, and throw a baseball another 70 mph, the ball will travel 110 mph relative to the earth. Believe it or not, this is wrong. Einstein showed with his theory of relativity that the ball would actually travel 109.99... mph. Too picky you say? Exactly. The question isn't "was Newton wrong?" The question is "How wrong was Newton?", and the answer is hardly wrong at all, and hardly wrong at all is a far better view than most any other.
So when someone says "science was wrong", the question is how wrong was it?. Right and wrong are relative. And for the most part, science is rarely substantively wrong, and it's errors tend to decrease in severity within a subject over time. Take the scientific consensus of opinion on the shape of the earth. It was, roughly: flat, spherical, oblately spherical, and slightly on the pear side of oblately spherical with a northern top. Notice that each error was smaller than the previous one (think in terms of average curvature per straight line distance), and that there is a pattern of sorts as it zooms in on reality. It does not oscillate wildly, as if one day we might discover that the earth is cube shaped. This, history clearly shows, is the pattern of science. Note also the historical pattern that while science makes errors, it is almost always science that corrects them. Creationists might trumpet the Piltdown hoax, but it was evolutionary scientists, not creationist hacks, that exposed it with evidence. Science, with apologies to Churchill, is the worst form of epistemology, except for all the others that have been tried.
Second, the conclusion of this horrid argument doesn't even follow if you grant the premise. So science has been wrong before? So what? Whether it is right or not now has to do with the evidence, not history. If LeBron James has missed 10 shots in a row, may we then conclude he will miss the next one as well (with a nod to Bayes), even in the face of evidence that he made it? Of course not.
So if Mona, or anyone else, is going to challenge the scientific consensus of anthropocentric global warming, she needs to do it with evidence, in the scientific literature, not in pop-science op-eds, with cries of persecution and logically poor rhetoric. Whatever science's track record of accuracy on science, it beats the track record of political hacks tenfold. What do you want to bet Mona is an evolution denier too? The two seem to run together. Funny coincidence that.
Charon's article focuses on an article in the New York Times which discusses the changing opinions of scientists regarding the supposed damaging effects of fat in our diet. As it is, the really sad thing about Mona's article is even if we dismissed all of the above, the case she tries to make still doesn't hold up. The situations between the current consensus on AGW and the former consensus on fatty foods (which I have not researched but will accept as stated for the sake of argument) are dissimilar in crucial ways her argument cannot survive.
The New York Times article focuses on a comment by then-Surgeon General C. Everett Koop:
"He introduced his report with these words: “The depth of the science base underlying its findings is even more impressive than that for tobacco and health in 1964.”
That was a ludicrous statement, as Gary Taubes demonstrates in his new book meticulously debunking diet myths, “Good Calories, Bad Calories” (Knopf, 2007). The notion that fatty foods shorten your life began as a hypothesis based on dubious assumptions and data; when scientists tried to confirm it they failed repeatedly. The evidence against Häagen-Dazs was nothing like the evidence against Marlboros.
It may seem bizarre that a surgeon general could go so wrong. After all, wasn’t it his job to express the scientific consensus? But that was the problem. Dr. Koop was expressing the consensus."
Right away there are glaring differences between this and AGW. AGW is not failing to be confirmed by scientists. The findings are being confirmed repeatedly, and in multiple disciplines. Second, on what was the supposed scientific consensus on fatty foods based if scientists were unable to confirm it experimentally? If it was simply an unconfirmed hypothesis lacking peer-reviewed evidence, then it doesn't qualify as science. That some scientists may have held this to be so as a personal belief is entirely irrelevant to a judgement of the scientific process, as their opinions on politics and sports teams are. No peer-reviewed articles supporting the hypothesis, no scientific consensus, period.
So it was a popular consensus they had, and that is simply a case of group think, or as the article calls it, cascading:
"He was caught in what social scientists call a cascade.
We like to think that people improve their judgment by putting their minds together, and sometimes they do. The studio audience at “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire” usually votes for the right answer. But suppose, instead of the audience members voting silently in unison, they voted out loud one after another. And suppose the first person gets it wrong.
If the second person isn’t sure of the answer, he’s liable to go along with the first person’s guess. By then, even if the third person suspects another answer is right, she’s more liable to go along just because she assumes the first two together know more than she does. Thus begins an “informational cascade” as one person after another assumes that the rest can’t all be wrong.
Because of this effect, groups are surprisingly prone to reach mistaken conclusions even when most of the people started out knowing better..."
OK, point taken. But this is not how the scientific process works, and in fact, far from a condemnation of the scientific method, this is an affirmation of the importance of replicable experimentation. It is also worth nothing again, that the truth about a fatty diet was ultimately determined by scientists, not the cynics. It certainly wasn't, and rarely is, found by skeptics working outside their field, as science critics almost always are. And finally, this is not in any way a parallel to AGW, which was not something promoted by a single individual in a position of political power, as the fatty food theory apparently was, but has grown little by battled little from experimentation all over the world.
In a final confirmation of Charon's crankiness, she ends her criticism of scientists supposedly accepting something without sufficient science by, well, accepting hypotheses promoted by Bjorn Lomborg, non-climatologist (denialists are almost universally from fields other than the ones they criticize), and favorite son of the AGW denialists. And of course, he makes his case, just as the HIV denialists and evolution denialists do, in popular books, while avoiding the scientific literature. Charon ends with:
"The consensus is wrong on global warming. Wonder when The New York Times will figure it out? In the meanwhile, Lomborg points the way toward clear analysis."
Really Mona? And your basis for trusting a single individual over the worldwide scientific community is what exactly? Simple: he is telling her what she wants to hear, and her conservative sycophants will no doubt repeat his and her claims, sans understanding, as they have to this point, which creates in that little political subculture the illusion that they have science to back their views. Now THAT'S a cascade.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Supply Side Laffer Refutation
If you still believe lowering taxes has raised revenues, take a look at this chart. It looks like every other chart I've seen of government income, at least the ones made by people who worry about trivia like inflation, which people like Limbaugh always omit when they brag about how Reagan "doubled revenues" with his tax cuts. In fact it is nearly impossible to distinguish the Laffer curve years from any others.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Rosenhouse Nails the Neocons
Lately I have been trying to illustrate what I think has gone wrong with the Republican party, or modern conservatism, if you will. In response to a Michael Barone article on universities, Jason Rosenhouse nails what I have been trying to convey. Particularly perspicacious was this excerpt:
"Contrary to popular perception, conservatives, of both the social and libertarian varieties, are a dime a dozen in academe. What is rare is the sort of mindless right-wingery of people like Barone. People like Barone hate academe not for the patently flimsy reasons put forth in essays like this one. Rather, it is the fact that people who make their living from careful thought and deep study of subtle issues are not likely to support the causes so dear to the lunatic fringe represented by Barone.
Thus, religious scientists can be found in virtually every science department in the country. But you will not find very many creationists because creationism is amply refuted by the available evidence. And you will not find many fundamentalists or evangelicals, because those varieties of religion are especially hostile to the spirit of free and open inquiry. Many economists favor low taxes, small government, and limited regulation. But you will find very few who will endorse the lunacy of supply-side economics, with its fanatical emphasis on tax rates as the sole determinant of the health of the economy. And you will not find many who will endorse the economic policies of Ronald Reagan, because those policies are so blatantly in conflict with the basic principles of sound economics. Just in my own experience I know of political scientists and philosophers from a wide range of political persuasions. But you will be hard-pressed to find any who will discuss Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush with the level of obsequity demanded by the Barone's of the world. On issue after issue the right-wing holds views that are at odds with the available evidence. College professors tend to point that out. And then hacks like Barone write essays like this one."
That last part is it in a nutshell. It's not about conservative values, or religion per se, or Republicans vs Democrats. It is about ignoring the available evidence, and characituring one's political opposition in an intellectually dishonest way. The personification of this trend is Ann Coulter, whose content-free, fictional, pointlessly acerbic rhetoric elicits high praises and massive book sales via the converted, but little more than raised eyebrows and embarrassment from everyone else. She, Barone, and all the others like her are destroying the Republican party one ignorant misrepresented epithet at a time.
"Contrary to popular perception, conservatives, of both the social and libertarian varieties, are a dime a dozen in academe. What is rare is the sort of mindless right-wingery of people like Barone. People like Barone hate academe not for the patently flimsy reasons put forth in essays like this one. Rather, it is the fact that people who make their living from careful thought and deep study of subtle issues are not likely to support the causes so dear to the lunatic fringe represented by Barone.
Thus, religious scientists can be found in virtually every science department in the country. But you will not find very many creationists because creationism is amply refuted by the available evidence. And you will not find many fundamentalists or evangelicals, because those varieties of religion are especially hostile to the spirit of free and open inquiry. Many economists favor low taxes, small government, and limited regulation. But you will find very few who will endorse the lunacy of supply-side economics, with its fanatical emphasis on tax rates as the sole determinant of the health of the economy. And you will not find many who will endorse the economic policies of Ronald Reagan, because those policies are so blatantly in conflict with the basic principles of sound economics. Just in my own experience I know of political scientists and philosophers from a wide range of political persuasions. But you will be hard-pressed to find any who will discuss Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush with the level of obsequity demanded by the Barone's of the world. On issue after issue the right-wing holds views that are at odds with the available evidence. College professors tend to point that out. And then hacks like Barone write essays like this one."
That last part is it in a nutshell. It's not about conservative values, or religion per se, or Republicans vs Democrats. It is about ignoring the available evidence, and characituring one's political opposition in an intellectually dishonest way. The personification of this trend is Ann Coulter, whose content-free, fictional, pointlessly acerbic rhetoric elicits high praises and massive book sales via the converted, but little more than raised eyebrows and embarrassment from everyone else. She, Barone, and all the others like her are destroying the Republican party one ignorant misrepresented epithet at a time.
Confused about Liberals? Try a Reality Check
Burt Prelutsky has an article that is pretty typical of what one can hear about "liberals" from Republicans and those who support them with unwavering vigor. I am going to dissect his claims here for the purpose of showing:
1) The definition of "liberal" shifts conveniently depending on what point is being made.
2) The definition used most frequently is basically a convenient fiction.
3) Much of the bafflement of Prelutsky and people like him originates in his ignorance and insistence on clinging to outdated/disproven ideas, and consequently, on the "liberals" insistence on using the best information science has to offer.
4) Prelutsky, like so many conservatives, confuses speculation and differences of subjective evaluation with facts.
Prelutsky's beginning is revealing, but not the way he intends:
"I’ll come right out and admit that I understand Islamic terrorists far better than I do American liberals. After all, once you realize that young Muslims are taught by their religious leaders that our nation is militarily powerful and technologically advanced because we cut a deal with Satan, you can see where they’d be upset with us. But what is the deal with liberals? I'm serious."
That last part is what really scares me. This is what Prelutsky believes is behind the hatred of America by so many Muslims? Not our presence in and support of hated Israel, not our lifestyle that is radically sinful by their standards, not our multiple invasions and attacks of sovereign nations there (warranted or not), not our multi year occupation of Iraq, not our threats against Iran, none of that, but rather that we made a deal with the devil for our wealth and power? If so, I'd say no amount of confusion about liberals is going to match his confusion of Muslims. He goes on to ask a few questions about liberals:
"Why else would Americans so resent the United States having more influence in the world than, say, Luxembourg or Lichtenstein? Why do they seem to have no rooting interest in capitalism prevailing over all the other isms? Do they think that the reason they live so much better than the typical Russian or Turk is because they, themselves, are intellectually superior? Fat chance!"
This is, for all intents and purposes, a convenient fiction. Who are these liberals? Show me a quote and context for anyone prominent in American politics who believes such nonsense. It is no surprise to me that when people like Prelutsky make such claims there are never any quotes to support his contentions. Oh sure, there are still some out-and-out socialists out there, but they are either politically marginalized, or in Hollywood and should be. I'm sure Prelutsky would be up near the front of the line with me in thinking that entertainers should not be taken seriously per se in politics. He should stay consistent to that position and not use them to smear an entire group.
Far more realistic as to what mainstream liberals (really code for "Democrats" in this context), is that America sometimes overreaches in its influence in the world (a certain disastrous current military venture springs to mind), capitalism needs constraints in some arenas to avoid the tragedy of the commons, and that liberals are intellectually superior to conservatives for, well, the reasons every bit of data I've ever seen (check graduation rates in red vs blue states, for example), would suggest.
Such distortions indicate that Prelutsky isn't so much interested in understanding liberals as he is in demonizing them. If you need more evidence, here are the next round of questions:
"Why is it that liberals seem to believe that recycling cans is an important issue, but defeating terrorism isn’t? Why do they put so much stock in the blathering of Al Gore and Michael Moore? Why do they regard secondhand smoke as a bigger menace than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? What is wrong with these people?"
Here we see a conflation of two common conservative errors: confusing speculation with fact, and ignoring facts. Recycling cans, by which I presume he means taking care of the environment, is more important than defeating certain terrorist groups (remember terrorism is a battle technique, not a thing) because a ruined environment could destroy the entire human race. Terrorists are very limited in what they can do to us, that's why they're terrorists.
People put stock in what Al Gore says, again I'll presume Prelutsky is referring to global warming here, because he has the near unanimous support of the worldwide scientific community. The real question here is the reverse: why do Prelutsky and his ilk not put stock in Al Gore's global warming message? The answer comes with the examination of Michael Moore. His supporters support him in large part because he tells them what they want to hear. Likewise, Prelutsky has, I'll warrant, not done an exhaustive analysis of the science of global warming. He simply rejects what Gore has to say because it isn't the message he wants to hear. Ditto with Moore.
The second-hand smoke comparison with Ahmadinejad is another interesting case of a conservative pundit conflating a fact with a speculation and differences of subjective judgement. That second-hand smoke has a deleterious effect on people's health is now no longer in scientific doubt. So people smoking around me (a right I vigorously defend) is a threat to my health, and how much I deal with that is a subjective value judgement. We can argue the facts of the studies and the biology, but in the end the decision to worry about it, and how much, comes down to an intangible process. The same is true for Ahmadinejad, even more so since he has not been proven to be harm to anyone as has secondhand smoke. Sure, he has the potential to be worse, but how much so, and how much emphasis we place on him, is the same kind of subjective value judgement. I emphasize this because I see Republicans make this mistake over and over again, and they seem oblivious to the major category error they are making. The damage of secondhand smoke is scientifically evidenced. So is global warming, and evolution. Denying either is, scientifically speaking, wrong. Denying that Ahmadinejad is a major threat to our way of life is not in the same category at all, and it's high time conservatives like Prelutsky understood this. In the meantime, let's move on (heh) to Prelutsky's confusion of liberal views of immigration:
"Why will the same folks who’d call a cop if someone set foot in their front yard be so unconcerned about 20 million illegal aliens setting up camp in their country? And why will the same saps who work themselves into a tizzy if some small town sets up a Christmas tree in the public square defend a church’s right to provide a sanctuary for foreign nationals who have no business being in our country? "
These comparisons are akin to asking how one can be against abortion but for the death penalty, or for abortion but for animal rights, depending on which end of the political spectrum you want to attack. In either case the question reveals a lack of understanding of the differing underlying assumptions for each view. In the case of immigration, the answer to Prelutsky's comparisons is that many such liberals don't view immigration laws as equivalent to private property laws, or church/state separation, respectively. Do conservatives like Prelutsky really need it explained that an illegal immigrant who otherwise follows the laws and is a productive member of society is hardly in the same league of threat as a trespasser in my yard? It does seem to be the case with regard to church/state separation.
From here Prelutsky goes from asking inane questions to simply making shit up, rapid fire:
"Liberals would like to see us cut and run from Iraq. That’s because they enjoy seeing the American military lose. For them, Vietnam was positively rapturous. Their holy trinity consists of Jane Fonda, John Kerry and Walter Cronkite."
Really Burt? Who enjoys seeing America lose? Name them. I've not seen anyone in the mainstream press, or on the blogs for that matter, say anything like that. I've seen a lot of people who are sick of seeing America lose in Iraq, but none of them seemed happy about it. Are recognizing we are losing and wanting us to lose equivalent to Prelutsky? If so, its no wonder he is confused.
"They keep insisting that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11."
Uh, he didn't.
"What they refuse to acknowledge is that we are at war with Islamic fundamentalism."
Yes, or more to the point, they are at war with us. So obviously the intelligent thing to do was to attack the least fundamentalist nation in the area and destroy it's secular government so the radical Islamicists could move in. Then of course pretend they were there all the time, and that somehow our presence there prevents another 9/11, reasoning so flawed every conservative ought to be embarrassed by it. Speaking of embarrassing non sequitors, at this point Prelutsky launches into a series of them:
"I’m aware that liberals will tell you that the Islamics hate us because we’re over there, violating their sacred turf. But if that’s the case, why are they killing civilians in Holland and Bali, Indonesia and the Philippines, Russia and Spain?"
Uh, many Islamicists tell us that too, and have been for a very long time. However, it is important to remember that Islamicists are not androids marching in lockstep. Different groups have different agendas. The fact that some of them find targets elsewhere doesn't change the fact that our presence in that part of the world isn't helping matters. It's akin to saying "how can you say your dog bit me because I was in your yard when I know other kids who have been bitten by other dogs in the park."
"If we’re not at war with Muslim terrorism, why do I have to remove my shoes before I’m allowed to board a plane?"
So if we let you board with your shoes Burt, the war would be over? Seriously, we have these idiotic standards in airports for the same reason we are in Iraq: some people think we have to do something, even if it makes no sense at all.
"And if we are at war, why can’t airport security concentrate on Arabs of a certain age and quit behaving like a bunch of politically correct fatheads?"
Because Burt, we have a little thing in this country called the constitution, which conservatives are supposed to care about, and in which it explicitly states that we have the right to be secure in our person and possessions barring probable cause with evidence. Some people take the position that being the same race as the enemy doesn't qualify, and that it is inefficient, since 99.9% of the time the searches would turn up nothing. Were we at war with France, would we be justified in searching everyone with French heritage? Some also believe it would be a simple matter for the enemy to learn what standards we are using for the search and recruit agents outside that range.
Now there is certainly room for disagreement about many of those items, and I have my share. But to claim to not understand this line of reasoning borders on intellectual dishonesty.
That's really the core of it. Prelutsky doesn't honestly have a lack of understanding of where "liberals" are coming from. No one could be that dense. He is merely shilling, attempting to present the enemy, in this case the Democrats, as "liberals", a word that in some conservative circles is the end of the debate. It is also a word that conveniently shifts meaning depending on the speakers agenda, narrow when addressing the absurdities at the fringes, broad when attempting to paint everyone who deviates from the neocon agenda as some sort of wacko. Thus, the inevitable discussion of the Hollywood left, an easy target and one sure to rally the base. Of course, when denigrating someone else's intelligence, best not to make moronic comments like this:
"This village is filled with a bunch of idiots who, when they’re not busy getting drunk, shooting up and behaving like spoiled brats, can be found yammering about global warming and poverty in America."
Again, Burt treats differences in opinions and priorities as the equivalent of a factual denial, as if there were some objective analysis that says people shouldn't worry about these issues. The irony is rich, since his denial of the global warming problem is the position with the least objectivity behind it. Then he launches into another favorite red herring of the right, which I think of as the Al Gore gambit: the idea that hypocrisy negates a real problem, or put another way, that an individual promoting a group effort must first individually completely conform to the requested standards, else the problem doesn't exist:
"Oddly enough, those are two problems they could actually do something about. Assuming that carbon emissions actually have an effect on the earth’s temperature, might it not be beneficial if these clucks stopped chugging around in Hummers and limos, stopped heating and cooling houses slightly larger than the palace at Versailles, and grounded their private jets for the foreseeable future?"
Aside from the obvious ad hominem, the argument itself makes no sense at all. The proportion of America's pollution for which Hollywood is responsible is not likely significant. Hollywood could return to the stone age and the globe would keep on warming.
"As for poverty, the plain fact of the matter is that the only poor people these movie folks ever encounter are maids, gardeners, nannies and waiters. Well, if these overly pampered nincompoops were really serious about eliminating poverty in America, all they’d have to do is pay higher wages and leave bigger tips!"
Again, the GDP is simply not so dominated by Hollywood that this would be true.
Everyone like Burt who is confused by "liberals", I make the following suggestion. First, stop using the term "liberals". It means everything and nothing. Challenge individual people's individual arguments. Be specific. You will find the American political spectrum is not a binary conservative vs liberal dichotomy, but a broad mixture of views. Broad brushing everyone who departs from the neocon party line as a "liberal" may make for good guffaws among the converted, but it falls completely flat in persuading others, because it fails to deal with the real views held by real people. Second, deal in facts, not speculation. I find it highly ironic that so many deride "liberals" as being all emotion and no facts, because on so many issues: global warming, evolution, stem cells, the Iraq war, and so many other issues discussed above, the conservatives are all speculation and no facts.
1) The definition of "liberal" shifts conveniently depending on what point is being made.
2) The definition used most frequently is basically a convenient fiction.
3) Much of the bafflement of Prelutsky and people like him originates in his ignorance and insistence on clinging to outdated/disproven ideas, and consequently, on the "liberals" insistence on using the best information science has to offer.
4) Prelutsky, like so many conservatives, confuses speculation and differences of subjective evaluation with facts.
Prelutsky's beginning is revealing, but not the way he intends:
"I’ll come right out and admit that I understand Islamic terrorists far better than I do American liberals. After all, once you realize that young Muslims are taught by their religious leaders that our nation is militarily powerful and technologically advanced because we cut a deal with Satan, you can see where they’d be upset with us. But what is the deal with liberals? I'm serious."
That last part is what really scares me. This is what Prelutsky believes is behind the hatred of America by so many Muslims? Not our presence in and support of hated Israel, not our lifestyle that is radically sinful by their standards, not our multiple invasions and attacks of sovereign nations there (warranted or not), not our multi year occupation of Iraq, not our threats against Iran, none of that, but rather that we made a deal with the devil for our wealth and power? If so, I'd say no amount of confusion about liberals is going to match his confusion of Muslims. He goes on to ask a few questions about liberals:
"Why else would Americans so resent the United States having more influence in the world than, say, Luxembourg or Lichtenstein? Why do they seem to have no rooting interest in capitalism prevailing over all the other isms? Do they think that the reason they live so much better than the typical Russian or Turk is because they, themselves, are intellectually superior? Fat chance!"
This is, for all intents and purposes, a convenient fiction. Who are these liberals? Show me a quote and context for anyone prominent in American politics who believes such nonsense. It is no surprise to me that when people like Prelutsky make such claims there are never any quotes to support his contentions. Oh sure, there are still some out-and-out socialists out there, but they are either politically marginalized, or in Hollywood and should be. I'm sure Prelutsky would be up near the front of the line with me in thinking that entertainers should not be taken seriously per se in politics. He should stay consistent to that position and not use them to smear an entire group.
Far more realistic as to what mainstream liberals (really code for "Democrats" in this context), is that America sometimes overreaches in its influence in the world (a certain disastrous current military venture springs to mind), capitalism needs constraints in some arenas to avoid the tragedy of the commons, and that liberals are intellectually superior to conservatives for, well, the reasons every bit of data I've ever seen (check graduation rates in red vs blue states, for example), would suggest.
Such distortions indicate that Prelutsky isn't so much interested in understanding liberals as he is in demonizing them. If you need more evidence, here are the next round of questions:
"Why is it that liberals seem to believe that recycling cans is an important issue, but defeating terrorism isn’t? Why do they put so much stock in the blathering of Al Gore and Michael Moore? Why do they regard secondhand smoke as a bigger menace than Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? What is wrong with these people?"
Here we see a conflation of two common conservative errors: confusing speculation with fact, and ignoring facts. Recycling cans, by which I presume he means taking care of the environment, is more important than defeating certain terrorist groups (remember terrorism is a battle technique, not a thing) because a ruined environment could destroy the entire human race. Terrorists are very limited in what they can do to us, that's why they're terrorists.
People put stock in what Al Gore says, again I'll presume Prelutsky is referring to global warming here, because he has the near unanimous support of the worldwide scientific community. The real question here is the reverse: why do Prelutsky and his ilk not put stock in Al Gore's global warming message? The answer comes with the examination of Michael Moore. His supporters support him in large part because he tells them what they want to hear. Likewise, Prelutsky has, I'll warrant, not done an exhaustive analysis of the science of global warming. He simply rejects what Gore has to say because it isn't the message he wants to hear. Ditto with Moore.
The second-hand smoke comparison with Ahmadinejad is another interesting case of a conservative pundit conflating a fact with a speculation and differences of subjective judgement. That second-hand smoke has a deleterious effect on people's health is now no longer in scientific doubt. So people smoking around me (a right I vigorously defend) is a threat to my health, and how much I deal with that is a subjective value judgement. We can argue the facts of the studies and the biology, but in the end the decision to worry about it, and how much, comes down to an intangible process. The same is true for Ahmadinejad, even more so since he has not been proven to be harm to anyone as has secondhand smoke. Sure, he has the potential to be worse, but how much so, and how much emphasis we place on him, is the same kind of subjective value judgement. I emphasize this because I see Republicans make this mistake over and over again, and they seem oblivious to the major category error they are making. The damage of secondhand smoke is scientifically evidenced. So is global warming, and evolution. Denying either is, scientifically speaking, wrong. Denying that Ahmadinejad is a major threat to our way of life is not in the same category at all, and it's high time conservatives like Prelutsky understood this. In the meantime, let's move on (heh) to Prelutsky's confusion of liberal views of immigration:
"Why will the same folks who’d call a cop if someone set foot in their front yard be so unconcerned about 20 million illegal aliens setting up camp in their country? And why will the same saps who work themselves into a tizzy if some small town sets up a Christmas tree in the public square defend a church’s right to provide a sanctuary for foreign nationals who have no business being in our country? "
These comparisons are akin to asking how one can be against abortion but for the death penalty, or for abortion but for animal rights, depending on which end of the political spectrum you want to attack. In either case the question reveals a lack of understanding of the differing underlying assumptions for each view. In the case of immigration, the answer to Prelutsky's comparisons is that many such liberals don't view immigration laws as equivalent to private property laws, or church/state separation, respectively. Do conservatives like Prelutsky really need it explained that an illegal immigrant who otherwise follows the laws and is a productive member of society is hardly in the same league of threat as a trespasser in my yard? It does seem to be the case with regard to church/state separation.
From here Prelutsky goes from asking inane questions to simply making shit up, rapid fire:
"Liberals would like to see us cut and run from Iraq. That’s because they enjoy seeing the American military lose. For them, Vietnam was positively rapturous. Their holy trinity consists of Jane Fonda, John Kerry and Walter Cronkite."
Really Burt? Who enjoys seeing America lose? Name them. I've not seen anyone in the mainstream press, or on the blogs for that matter, say anything like that. I've seen a lot of people who are sick of seeing America lose in Iraq, but none of them seemed happy about it. Are recognizing we are losing and wanting us to lose equivalent to Prelutsky? If so, its no wonder he is confused.
"They keep insisting that Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with 9/11."
Uh, he didn't.
"What they refuse to acknowledge is that we are at war with Islamic fundamentalism."
Yes, or more to the point, they are at war with us. So obviously the intelligent thing to do was to attack the least fundamentalist nation in the area and destroy it's secular government so the radical Islamicists could move in. Then of course pretend they were there all the time, and that somehow our presence there prevents another 9/11, reasoning so flawed every conservative ought to be embarrassed by it. Speaking of embarrassing non sequitors, at this point Prelutsky launches into a series of them:
"I’m aware that liberals will tell you that the Islamics hate us because we’re over there, violating their sacred turf. But if that’s the case, why are they killing civilians in Holland and Bali, Indonesia and the Philippines, Russia and Spain?"
Uh, many Islamicists tell us that too, and have been for a very long time. However, it is important to remember that Islamicists are not androids marching in lockstep. Different groups have different agendas. The fact that some of them find targets elsewhere doesn't change the fact that our presence in that part of the world isn't helping matters. It's akin to saying "how can you say your dog bit me because I was in your yard when I know other kids who have been bitten by other dogs in the park."
"If we’re not at war with Muslim terrorism, why do I have to remove my shoes before I’m allowed to board a plane?"
So if we let you board with your shoes Burt, the war would be over? Seriously, we have these idiotic standards in airports for the same reason we are in Iraq: some people think we have to do something, even if it makes no sense at all.
"And if we are at war, why can’t airport security concentrate on Arabs of a certain age and quit behaving like a bunch of politically correct fatheads?"
Because Burt, we have a little thing in this country called the constitution, which conservatives are supposed to care about, and in which it explicitly states that we have the right to be secure in our person and possessions barring probable cause with evidence. Some people take the position that being the same race as the enemy doesn't qualify, and that it is inefficient, since 99.9% of the time the searches would turn up nothing. Were we at war with France, would we be justified in searching everyone with French heritage? Some also believe it would be a simple matter for the enemy to learn what standards we are using for the search and recruit agents outside that range.
Now there is certainly room for disagreement about many of those items, and I have my share. But to claim to not understand this line of reasoning borders on intellectual dishonesty.
That's really the core of it. Prelutsky doesn't honestly have a lack of understanding of where "liberals" are coming from. No one could be that dense. He is merely shilling, attempting to present the enemy, in this case the Democrats, as "liberals", a word that in some conservative circles is the end of the debate. It is also a word that conveniently shifts meaning depending on the speakers agenda, narrow when addressing the absurdities at the fringes, broad when attempting to paint everyone who deviates from the neocon agenda as some sort of wacko. Thus, the inevitable discussion of the Hollywood left, an easy target and one sure to rally the base. Of course, when denigrating someone else's intelligence, best not to make moronic comments like this:
"This village is filled with a bunch of idiots who, when they’re not busy getting drunk, shooting up and behaving like spoiled brats, can be found yammering about global warming and poverty in America."
Again, Burt treats differences in opinions and priorities as the equivalent of a factual denial, as if there were some objective analysis that says people shouldn't worry about these issues. The irony is rich, since his denial of the global warming problem is the position with the least objectivity behind it. Then he launches into another favorite red herring of the right, which I think of as the Al Gore gambit: the idea that hypocrisy negates a real problem, or put another way, that an individual promoting a group effort must first individually completely conform to the requested standards, else the problem doesn't exist:
"Oddly enough, those are two problems they could actually do something about. Assuming that carbon emissions actually have an effect on the earth’s temperature, might it not be beneficial if these clucks stopped chugging around in Hummers and limos, stopped heating and cooling houses slightly larger than the palace at Versailles, and grounded their private jets for the foreseeable future?"
Aside from the obvious ad hominem, the argument itself makes no sense at all. The proportion of America's pollution for which Hollywood is responsible is not likely significant. Hollywood could return to the stone age and the globe would keep on warming.
"As for poverty, the plain fact of the matter is that the only poor people these movie folks ever encounter are maids, gardeners, nannies and waiters. Well, if these overly pampered nincompoops were really serious about eliminating poverty in America, all they’d have to do is pay higher wages and leave bigger tips!"
Again, the GDP is simply not so dominated by Hollywood that this would be true.
Everyone like Burt who is confused by "liberals", I make the following suggestion. First, stop using the term "liberals". It means everything and nothing. Challenge individual people's individual arguments. Be specific. You will find the American political spectrum is not a binary conservative vs liberal dichotomy, but a broad mixture of views. Broad brushing everyone who departs from the neocon party line as a "liberal" may make for good guffaws among the converted, but it falls completely flat in persuading others, because it fails to deal with the real views held by real people. Second, deal in facts, not speculation. I find it highly ironic that so many deride "liberals" as being all emotion and no facts, because on so many issues: global warming, evolution, stem cells, the Iraq war, and so many other issues discussed above, the conservatives are all speculation and no facts.
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