Sinners in the Hands of an Angry Blog

God, I really hate articles like this:

NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) — Changes in the global pecking order are coming.

As western nations face stunted economic growth and years of painful budget-slashing ahead, developing nations like China, Brazil, India and Russia are slowly moving up on the world stage.

Look, people, “pecking order” implies that the person with the #1 world GDP “wins” and gets some special benefit because of that ranking.  That’s simply not how this works.  Do we really need more pointless status contests between nations?  The only thing that matters is the absolute numbers, not the relative ones.  If China is going up, that is good for everyone.  If the US is going down (it isn’t) that is bad for everyone.

The United States is struggling to hit 2.7% growth for the year, while emerging economies, which also include smaller countries mostly in Asia and Latin America, are collectively on track for 7.1% growth for the year.

Jesus, how can you state these numbers without the real figures?  Smaller percentages of bigger numbers can be larger in real terms for the citizens of those countries.  And, more importantly, you simply can’t make these kind of comparisons and say “well that means the US is screwing up.”  Or things like this:

So where did these countries get it right while western superpowers got it so wrong?

God damn.  The reason developing economies grow faster than developed economies is because they’re catching up.  You can’t compare the two.  If you compare two nations with similar conditions, and one’s growth rate is higher, then we can talk.  Comparing China and the US on percentage GDP growth is pointless.

And while we’re on the topic of pointless comparisons, there’s no point to comparing GDP without talking per capita, which apparently at least someone the article author interviewed was willing to say:

Even if China does become the world’s largest economy, its population is roughly 4.5 times bigger than that of the U.S., making it difficult for China to catch up to the American standard of living, said Jay Bryson, global economist with Wells Fargo.

This undermines the whole “pecking order” comment — and the entire tone of the article.  There is no meaningful information to be gained from knowing who has the highest GDP.  It’s pointless, and just talking about it puts it in the frame that somehow China would be “beating us” if they had a higher GDP, as if that would be bad for us.

Higher per capita growth, in any country, is good for every other country.  If somehow, every other country got to be higher than us (without US growth being negative), and we were dead last on the rankings — it would still be good for us.  In fact, it would be incredibly good — because it would mean that billions of people around the world had exited poverty and would now have immense resources to develop new technologies that we would benefit from, or buy our stuff, or sell us their stuff.  To slightly rework a great quote:

There is a single light of [economic progress], and to brighten it anywhere is to brighten it everywhere.

This is almost precisely the same conversation I had with a Democratic campaign volunteer in my (very Democratic) area of Ohio:

Steve Nicholson barely opens the storm door for the Democratic campaign volunteer trying to talk to him about the Ohio governor’s race. “I don’t care for either one,” he says, “I just want jobs.” The volunteer says that’s exactly why he should vote for the incumbent, Democrat Ted S trickland. “Not voting is a vote for Kasich,” she says, referring to Republican challenger John Kasich. “Strickland will be better for jobs,” agrees Nicholson, 30. So will he vote? No. Does he at least want a little campaign literature to learn about the race? No. The storm door closes.

I didn’t say anything about jobs, I said that I didn’t like Strickland’s opposition to charter schools.  And I didn’t say anything about Kasich, because at the time I didn’t even know the name of the Strickland’s opponent — I think I just called him “the other guy.”  And I think I’m relatively interested in politics!

Please focus on economic issues.  This is your competitive advantage over Republicans — they are perfectly willing to compete with you on social conservatism — they’ve certainly had a lot of practice.  But you’ll have a much better advantage trumpeting fiscal policy — that is, after all, the genesis of the name “Tea Party.”  There’s a reason this name was chosen, rather than one loaded with social or religious meaning.  You can be socially conservative, but remember what makes you different and focus on it.

Plus, it’ll give you an advantage when you actually have to face Democrats in the real election.  There are moderate Democrats (and libertarians) who are willing to vote for fiscally conservative people, but if you focus too much on social or religious issues, they won’t, and it’ll only motivate the non-moderate Democrats to vote in droves.  Remember, you have to beat both other Republicans and Democrats — not just one.  Social issues can’t do that for you, but economic ones can.  Stick to your core competencies.

David Boaz says essentially the same thing to social conservatives in general, but of course, vastly more eloquently.

This isn’t painful until you see the date:

Without the high stakes of U.S.-Soviet conflict, national-greatness conservatives are desperately seeking the moral equivalent of the Cold War. Their pursuit is in vain, for Americans go to war reluctantly and are happy to be at peace. At this point in our history, American nationalism is a secure ideal. Its meaning evolves, certainly, but no one who has ever been abroad–or spent much time outside the Beltway–can doubt its vigor. It is absurd to think we require central direction to feel American.

Americans don’t need to concoct grand national struggles merely to prove their mettle. They prove it every day, in their own private pursuits.

Well said, I bet they had those jerks who are constantly invoking the war on terror in mind when they said that!

This article was published in the September 25, 1997 Wall Street Journal.

Oh.

3 in 4 Americans believe stupid things, via Yglesias.  I thought the funniest was this:

The “cumulative percent” column shows that more than one-fifth of all Americans, 22%, believe in five or more items, 32% believe in at least four items, and more than half, 57%, believe in at least two paranormal items. Only 1% believe in all 10 items.

I’m especially interested in the 2% who believe 9 out of the 10 things.  Which was the one idea that they said “no way, that’s just going too far?”:

Believe in
	%
Extrasensory perception, or ESP	41
That houses can be haunted	37
Ghosts/that spirits of dead people can come back in certain places/situations	32
Telepathy/communication between minds without using traditional senses	31
Clairvoyance/the power of the mind to know the past and predict the future	26
Astrology, or that the position of the stars and planets can affect people’s lives	25
That people can communicate mentally with someone who has died	21
Witches	21
Reincarnation, that is, the rebirth of the soul in a new body after death	20
Channeling/allowing a ‘spirit-being’ to temporarily assume control of body	9

I assume that for most people,  it was most likely to be “channeling” since the fewest % of people believed that one. I just think it’s funny that a non-zero quantity of people were cool with all the rest, but that “channeling” was right out.  ”That’s not at ALL how spirits work, what kind of idiot would believe that?”

So, lots of people are talking about the traditional conservative-libertarian alliance and wondering: why?  I think one reason this worked for as long as it did is highlighted by things like this:

Earlier this summer, Grover Norquist agreed to join the group’s board and he immediately came under fire for betraying the conservative movement and the same thing has been happening to Ann Coulter, who agreed to speak at GOProud’s Homocon 2010, leading WorldNetDaily to drop her from its own upcoming Taking Back America conference[.]

This would be unthinkable a few decades ago, not that a conservative group would write someone out for being “too gay friendly,” but that any conservatives would have fit that description.  The same situation exists with dozens of other socially liberal issues — from general polls to conservative politicians themselves, there has been a massive (though obviously not as massive as people who already self-defined as liberal) sea change on social issues.  You see Republican politicians saying (and even more telling, implicitly accepting as fact) tons of things that would have gotten them purged as evil liberals years ago.

So, if you buy the 2-axis version of US politics, conservatives and Republicans have been moving quite a bit to the left on the social axis over the past few decades.  Might this be another reason why libertarians (socially liberal, fiscally conservative) felt comfortable with the alliance?  After all, what defines “social conservatism” has changed a great deal – for the better, in my opinion.   We could imagine that in another few decades, if the opinion poll trendlines on issues like gay marriage and pot use continue, a “social conservative” could find themselves in favor (or perhaps at least grudgingly accepting) of such things.  So maybe allying with conservatives is a-ok, because whatever social policy disagreements libertarians may have with them will probably be resolved (in the libertarian’s favor) in another generation or two.

Now, a  bigger question is: regardless of social issues, is an alliance with conservatives even worth it on fiscal matters?  I’m looking at you, Mr. Bush.

It’s frustrating to see Roger Pilon of Cato, an institution I normally like, buy into the anti-Cordoba viewpoint:

It is the ground where some 3,000 people of all faiths lost their lives in a brutal attack by radical Muslims acting in the name of their religion, however distorted their beliefs may have been. Those who lost loved ones that day, to say nothing of the rest of us, cannot be indifferent to that fact — as those who support the mosque’s location near Ground Zero seem to be.

Yeah, and if radical Muslims were setting up shop, I might be willing to take a harder look at it.  But this is explicitly the work of moderate Muslims who publicly, frequently, reject violence.  There is absolutely no contention that they they’re anything but — and I think that Pilon understands that, because at no point in the three posts on the topic does he attempt to accuse them of extremism, like some other commenters.

This gets back to the concept that moderate Muslims are our greatest weapon (in the comments, Sarah notes that using the term “weapon” to describe advocacy of peace is probably a poor choice of words) against Muslim fundamentalism.  If another ally of ours, such as England (a theocratic state, I might add!), wanted to put up a building expressly dedicated to peacefulness regarding religion, then I would salute it — and Muslim moderates are just as important an ally (if not more so!) in fighting fundamentalism.  I consider our alliance with Muslim moderates to be the ultimate insult that we can level — not to us, or our memory of September 11th — but to the backwards thugs who committed that crime.  The fact that we consider their greatest enemy (Muslim fundamentalists have been fighting moderates far longer than Americans) to be our esteemed allies is a gigantic “fuck you” to their medieval concept of the world, and that’s something that can’t be yelled at them often enough.  Cordoba House is indeed a symbol — that we consider moderate Muslims to be partners in the great alliance against fundamentalism that encompasses the vast majority of humanity.

The only thing I really agree with Mr. Pilon on is this:

After all, the president isn’t, or shouldn’t be, the moral compass of the nation — certainly not this president. [I'd argue that he's no worse or better than any other] But it’s rather late in the day to be ducking out on this one, now that it’s been elevated to the presidential level.

Definitely.  We have a division of powers for a reason — this is, legally, a local zoning issue — and “legally” is certainly the standard by which we should judge whether a president should get involved.  He has no reason or jurisdiction here.  Though I don’t think it’s some great crime by itself, I think we would be all be better off if we exercised a little more restraint about presidential involvement.  There are actual tasks a president should be doing, and I certainly don’t think his execution of them has been so perfect that there is time to spend giving speeches on little things like this.

But when it comes down to it, I don’t want to convince conservative opponents of Cordoba that they should merely be allowed to build, though I respect those who are willing to allow it based on principles of property rights and religious freedom, I want to convince them to enthusiastically support it, for the precise reason we all hate violent fundamentalists.  For the past 9 years we’ve actually sent thousands of our soldiers into battle, some losing their lives, alongside moderate Muslims who categorically reject the extremism of idiots like Al Qaeda.  Whether or not you think that specific policy is a good idea, we are actually sacrificing lives to achieve the triumph of moderation over extremism within Islam.  If we can ask men and women to lay down their lives for the idea that moderate Muslims are our allies, we should be able to accept a far smaller burden (if the construction offends you) ourselves — nor should we hesitate to stand beside those who are already the epitome of that idea’s victory.

Edit: as Cato is not a monolithic organization, here is Christopher Preble with a much better viewpoint.

Edit 2: I decided that “CATO” should be the mythical Central Atlantic Treaty Organization.

When objecting to regulations of businesses, libertarians often point out that just because the intent is to put wise and noble regulators in charge, that doesn’t always happen.  And sometimes, those regulators may end up being people that advocates for that regulation may not like at all.  Here’s one case:

The developers’ [of Cordoba House in NYC] landlord is ConEdison, the power utility serving New York City. While ConEd is a private company, it is subject to regulation by New York’s Public Service Commission. Republican candidate for Governor Rick Lazio has pledged to appoint PSC members who would block the sale of the property [to Cordoba House].

This is not a damning argument against regulation of this power utility — but rather it’s just an example of how regulatory power, though granted with the best of intentions, can often be used for less than noble goals.

I randomly stumbled across this critique of reviews for the latest Michael Cera movie.  I don’t really care about the movie itself, since I haven’t seen it, but this jumped out at me:

NPR’s Linda Holmes dissected reviews from the film’s harshest critics and discovered something interesting: negative critics don’t hate the film per se, they hate its target audience. Scott Pilgrim, you see, is a tale in which Michael Cera must defeat his love interest’s seven evil ex-boyfriends. It’s loaded with geeky gamer jokes and comic fanboy humor. Is it right for critics to denounce a film based on the audience it caters to?

Now that is something that exists far beyond movie reviews: disliking something because we don’t like those who already like it.  I’d actually go so far as to say that this mechanism, more than any other, drives our political beliefs — and it makes sense that it would.  Our brains are finely tuned mechanisms; but they are not tuned for the goal of analyzing policies for their pros and cons.  What they are really good at is social politics — determining who is on our side and who isn’t, and furthermore, figuring out which beliefs or ideas represent them or us.

In the debate over ending birthright citizenship, Will Wilkinson describes the same thing:

Part of it, I’m afraid, is just knee-jerk opposition to policies their political enemies favor. Of course, the fact that bad people with bad motives support a policy does not mean it is therefore bad policy.

Now, I’d like to believe that I’m above all that, and my opposition to Will’s idea of ending BC is based solely on my reasoned, objective analysis of the situation, but I’m not sure I can justify that.  After all, I certainly have paid the idea a lot more attention since Will proposed it, because I respect his motivations (and on a basic tribal level, consider him “on my side”) a lot more than most of the other people who have proposed the idea.  I’m still opposed to it, but I’ve softened my opposition to “I don’t think it would achieve very much, and would be more difficult than alternatives that I consider to be superior.”  I would not have granted that to the average proponent of the idea.

Reihan Salam was talking at Tim’s site (using a dandy inline chat called Envolve) about liberaltarians and conservatarians.  In discussing this, one of the most interesting things (to me) that came up was the debate over how to approach those you disagree with.  The specific instance was the mosque near the site of the 9/11 attacks.  While (I think) everyone was agreed that it should be allowed, the two basic positions on how to approach those who didn’t were as follows:

1) Vinegar.  Stigmatize bad beliefs — call those opposed to the mosque bigots.  The thought being that you don’t want to establish that such bigotry is an acceptable position.  I assume this goes along with the idea of “moving the goalposts.”

2) Honey.  Don’t call them bigots, instead try to show them that the position you take embodies some of their basic principles.  Just insulting your opponents might just cause them to retreat to the echo chamber.

(more…)

This is how it should be done:

I am curious about the modern liberal take on autonomy and credit.  Let’s say that two gay men, of unknown health status, want to have informed, consensual, unprotected sex.  Should the law prohibit this?  I believe the answer is no.  [...]

The unprotected sex is riskier and less prudent than borrowing money at an annualized rate of two hundred percent.  Why prohibit one and not the other?

That’s precisely what I think of when I hear “liberaltarian:” showing how libertarian policies can exemplify liberal values.  And perhaps more importantly, showing not just that those liberal values are a welcome side effect, but indeed the purpose and justification for the policy.

I complained when Democrats hadn’t done anything on DADT, so it’s only fair to compliment them when they did:

Washington (CNN) — The U.S. House and a Senate committee approved amendments to a military bill Thursday that would repeal the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy barring openly gay and lesbian soldiers from military service, but only after some conditions are met.

Thanks for doing at least something right.

Now this is an interesting article (forwarded to me from a friend):

“This result may provide a cautionary lesson as we think about international relations in our contemporary world,” said Spencer. “Since the bureaucratic state as a political form originally evolved through a process of predatory expansion, we should not be surprised if states continue to have predatory tendencies, regardless of their particular ideologies.”

I was thinking vaguely about something like this the other day — that the idea of the modern state as provider of public goods that steps in to provide where non-state solutions fail — is a very recent idea.  In the NSF press release, someone else has expressed it much more clearly, as usual with anything that I think about.  I think most people think that wars, corruption, nepotism and abuse of power are the collateral damage we endure in order to have governments that defend us.  But it’s probably more accurate to say that national defense is probably a collateral benefit that we enjoy from the desire of individuals in government for power, prestige and pleasure.

Now, it’s possible we might be able to divine, through great study, that the perks we provide to our leaders today is necessary for some reason — but surely the burden of proof should be on these leaders themselves?  For thousands of years, powerful men have done their best to accrue as much power, wealth and women as they could — yet when we see modern leaders doing the same, we somehow conclude, like Charlie Brown with a football, that this time it will be different?  Emperors don’t have harems because they provide for stable succession — regardless of whether or not that’s true, it was certainly a rationale papered on afterwards.

For millions of years, the smart pack chimps that we are have been attempting to maximize their position in the social hierarchy.  Do we really think we’ve somehow cured this condition?  Evolution is laughing at us as we try to rationalize all the policies that powerful individuals present.  Certainly, there are exceptions — but examine any given policy on the table today with an eye to this question: does it increase the power, prestige or wealth of the people presenting it?  The answer is almost always: “yes.”  Even if it has other collateral benefits (to you or others), it’s insane to think that’s why they’re doing it.

Update: I’ll point out what I consider to be an exception: nuclear arms reduction.  Even though the actual “power” reduction is irrelevant, (are you less powerful if you can now only blow up the Earth 10 times over, instead of 20?) it was a power reduction voluntarily considered and enacted, and so I salute it.

… who cares?  We’ve known this for a long time, notwithstanding sappy nostalgic claims about the intellectual quality of conservatives in the 70′s and 80′s.  So let’s look at the claims, all from people whose opinions I respect:

Sanchez:

I’ve written a bit lately about what I see as a systematic trend toward “epistemic closure” in the modern conservative movement.

Sullivan:

[...] you begin to see how deep the extremism runs in today’s Dixified, nihilist radical Republican party.

Yglesias:

The right just isn’t like that. It’s less demographically diverse, less diverse in its financial base, and less ideologically diverse.

Millman:

Intellectually, the children of the Bush Administration on the right are a lost generation. They may grow in wisdom, chastened by experience, but this will come at a price of lost confidence; or they may retain their confidence, but this will come at the greater price of never attaining wisdom.

Cowen:

I tend to agree with Sanchez and Sullivan[.]

Coates:

This is who they are–the proud and ignorant. If you believe that if we still had segregation we wouldn’t “have had all these problems,” this is the movement for you. If you believe that your president is a Muslim sleeper agent, this is the movement for you. If you honor a flag raised explicitly to destroy this country then this is the movement for you. If you flirt with secession, even now, then this movement is for you. If you are a “Real American” with no demonstrable interest in “Real America” then, by God, this movement of alchemists and creationists, of anti-science and hair tonic, is for you.

And I completely agree.  The right is filled with closed minds and idiotic beliefs of all stripes.  But I put a “but” at the top of this post.  Why?  Because which is more destructive?  A rapidly shrinking group of close-minded idiots, beset on all fronts by radically shifting opinions (out of their favor) on religion, homosexuality, gay marriage, pot use, immigration, evolution, and foreign wars of intervention?  Or an actually-in-power group that seems to enjoy wide public support for massive spending programs at a point in our history where we can’t afford them?

It seems so weird to focus on beating up the Republicans (though they richly deserve it) when they are losing so badly.  The best paragraph in Julian Sanchez’s piece is this:

Contemplate how vertigo-inducing this must be. You’ve got a local community where a certain set of cultural norms is so dominant that it’s just seen as obvious and natural that a lesbian wouldn’t have an equal right to participate in prom—to the point where the overt hostility isn’t really directed at Constance’s sexuality so much as her bewildering insistence on messing with the way everyone knowsthings are supposed to be. They’re not attuned to the injustice because it seems like almost a fact of nature. Except they’re now flooded with undeniable evidence that a hell of a lot of people don’t see things that way, and even hold their community in contempt for seeing things that way. There have been thousands of “outside” posts in a handful of days, with more every minute. (Think of the small-town high school quarterback getting to college and realizing, to his astonishment, that everyone thinks the “art fags” he used to slag on are the cool ones. Except without even leaving the small town.)

What is he describing here?  An intellectual movement completely under assault by the rest of the country, which reacts in horror and disgust at their stupidity.  A movement that is only able to survive in these little small towns if they maintain blissful ignorance of the wider world.  Is this really our enemy?  It sounds like they’ve lost already.  I certainly get the “let’s stamp out the last few cockroaches behind the fridge” but if the only political alternative to these cockroaches is a party spending billions of dollars we don’t have (to use the current Hit&Run slogan: “We Are Out Of Money”) and accelerating a financial disaster, then I’m not sure this is a sound tactical decision.

Yet at least 3 of the people listed above generally supported healthcare reform, which exacerbated this issue.  And don’t give me that “budget neutral” crap, because even if it is, those cuts/taxes needed to pay for HCR could have been used to pay off the already very large debt we had.  HCR didn’t put us in debt, it put us even more drastically in debt by using up the low-hanging revenue sources.

I said I put a “but” in the title for a reason.  And here’s what I’d put after it: “… but the Democrats are closed-minded idiots too — and the things they are idiotic about have much worse consequences and enjoy enough popular support that they don’t even have to seem open-minded.”

Pre-buttal 1:

“You just don’t care about racism/sexism/prejudice, because you’re minimizing their bad effects.”

No, I’m just pointing out that even though bad thing X exists, and is horribly bad,  bad thing Y might also exist, and might even be worse.  And that we live in a two-party system.

Pre-buttal 2:

“Spending lots on important stuff even when we have no money is ok, look at how much we’ve done it in the past.”

Well, in the past it was on a smaller scale than this, and lots of times we got out of it by cutting spending on things — and whichever things disapproved of by the party in power usually got cut first.  If the Democrats get credit for us running out of money, those close-minded Republicans are going to be the ones in power, determining which things get cut…

… Hernando De Soto!  Let’s give him a cape and a ticket from Lima to Kabul and let him work this stuff out:

Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) — In the Afghan capital’s department of motor vehicles, the simple act of registering a car can turn into days, even weeks, of waiting and frustration. Unless you pay off the right people.

[...]

The chaotic outdoor space that passes for a waiting area was teeming with “agents,” men who make sure bribe money reaches the right government offices and the paperwork gets done. Some, desperate for work, want their business to become a legal profession.

That sure sounds familiar!  Sadly, I’m not sure just sending De Soto over to talk to Karzai will work, mainly because, well:

He [De Soto] has briefed a number of national leaders like Vladimir Putin and Hamid Karzai, however none of them have yet chosen to implement his policies.^[13]

Damn it.  Putin and Karzai are probably two of the world leaders (I should maybe use “ex-leader” in Putin’s case, but then…) who most need to hear his message — that economies don’t succeed without the basic foundations:

De Soto argues that an important characteristic of capitalism is the functioning state protection of property rights in a formal property system where ownership and transactions are clearly recorded.

I think the reason that his policies have not been implemented (other than Peru, where he had the ear of the government) is that for most countries, the spoils of political power are exactly this: corruption, bureaucracy and purposely vague laws of ownership — it’s much easier to steal and take when it’s hard to prove who owns what.  This isn’t a terrible byproduct of the political system that we must squash — for a large percentage of Afghani (and Russian, and American) politicians, this is the point.  And so we see comments like this:

The key question for the Karzai government now is whether corruption so endemic can be successfully eradicated.

This is pretty typical: viewing corruption as something the government is striving against; two entities with divergent goals, fighting to see who the victor will be.  But in reality, it is the people in the government simply acting out their own natures, and struggling only to conceal it from the few who would disapprove and have the power to stop them.  And that is a vanishingly small number of people in Afghanistan.

Apparently excluding 50% of your adult population from the workforce was pretty stupid!  While the CNN article focuses almost exclusively on the US (and on consumption rather than production), this is a huge factor in nearly every “economic success story” that really never gets enough attention.  Sure, the big boom in the US after WW2 was due in part to soldiers returning to the workplace and new technology, but certainly a massive chunk of it had to be credited to the fact that new productive citizens were seemingly being manufactured out of thin air: women!  How much of the economic booms in India and China are directly due to women?

What does this say about societies that discourage women from working?  Well, I’m pretty sure their economic situations will be worse.  If the chart that showed % of women in the workforce on one axis and economic ranking on the other, I’m pretty sure it would be a nice positive, linear correlation.

Or more accurately, I don’t get why people are so invested in them.  Jim Manzi:

First, I am making a fact claim. My fact claim is this: The findings of the modern synthesis of evolutionary biology (MES) do not demonstrate that the universe is not unfolding according to a divine plan that privileges human beings

This has been going on for awhile.  Manzi is just making, what seems to me, to be a pretty basic claim: that evolution doesn’t preclude believing in a god that’s running the show.  Which seems pretty defensible, especially when you can define “god” as just about anything you want, including “a guy who uses evolution as a tool to create human life.”  But you have a whole herd of “con” people who don’t want to grant that because they see it as a slippery slope for theocracy (I guess?) and the “pro” people who are trying to stake out some territory for whichever religion they support.  It’s “anti evolution” people vs “pro evolution” people, but neither side seems to realize that even if they win, they haven’t proven anything.

The whole thing is stupid (yes that’s my erudite conclusion), because there’s no possible result from this debate that helps anyone.  Let’s say Manzi is 100% right (and despite being an atheist, I think he is) — what does that get anyone?  Nothing.  You’ve proven that there might be a god.  Hurray.  That’s a long way from any specific religion, because absolutely zero religions only assert that there is a god.  They say “there is a god, therefore all these other things.”  What evolution does contradict is religions that say “here are religious tenets that you must accept, and one of them is that life was created in a way that is at odds with evolution” — such as “in seven days” or “from the maw of Cthulu” or whatever.  And, if your religion is also dependent on the idea that the book that expounds these tenets is infallible, then yes, evolution kicks out some of the major pillars of your faith.  And I think that’s why you get such resistance to evolution from “the bible is the literal and infallible word of god” Christians, because it does violate their principles.

But then, we really don’t even need such a high-falutin’ theory of evolution to do that — since there are blatant internal contradictions in the bible (specifically around some of the years in which kings took the throne, etc…)  And so Manzi points out some of these pre-evolution arguments as well:

[...] many changes that we observe around us seem to be what we intuitively believe to be evil – the classic case is a tortured and suffering child. How could a God that comports with our idea of benevolence actively desire every evil act in the universe? As everybody knows, this is the problem of evil.

Note that both of these objections to a divine plan are independent of evolution. Both are objections that could be (and were) raised long before Charles Darwin was born. So, for us to say that the MES [evolution, roughly speaking] rules out a divine plan that privileges humans, we must assert that there is some incremental knowledge provided by the MES that rules out such a divine plan that was not available to us prior to Darwin.

And this highlights, to me, the idiocy of the argument over the existence of god, and the term atheism in general.  It really is impossible to use evolution (or anything else) to prove that god doesn’t exist.  What you can do, however, is much important.  You can argue that god, whether he exists or not — doesn’t matter to the way I live my life.  I’m not really an atheist (though I do have the incidental belief that god doesn’t exist) — because that doesn’t define what I believe.  I am an a-religionist — I believe that the principles (when held collectively, obviously I agree with many individual ones) of all religions that I have encountered are wrong, outside their belief that there might be a god.  Whatever beliefs I do have I feel are justified by non-religious methods.  Which is why people like using the term “secular” or “humanist.”  Religion just doesn’t have any impact on my life at all.

Here’s the way I see it: if god popped up right now and said “look, you were wrong, I do exist”, I would say “oh, guess I was” and go on living my life the way I have been, except I would have a really cool story to tell people.  Because if everything that is, is because god made it that way, then I should be able to deduce what god wants me to do from looking at the world around me, regardless of any intermediaries.  And these are the conclusions I’ve come to.

I too am surprised by these findings, about whether or not women should change their names:

Hamilton says that about half of respondents went so far as to say that the government should mandate women to change their names when they marry . . .

As someone who would not even have gotten married without the pressure of making family happy, I can completely understand not wanting to change one’s name.  So, at the risk of sounding like whatever stereotype you want, when my wife asked if I wanted her to change her name: I said no.  There were practical reasons, sure — being a doctor means there’s a certain amount of work involved for her to get the name on your certification changed, and she does have publications under her name.   If you are a female who has published under your maiden name, I strongly suggest not changing your name.  It’s a pain.   There were also ideological ones — I do actually buy into the concept that the reason women took men’s names for so long was because they really were junior partners, and there’s no reason to abide by it.

But to me, I think the reason was that I viewed her as a person with a specific name.  In the same way you experience a moment of confusion every time you meet a female friend named Jane Smith, and she introduces herself as “oh, now I’m Jane Jones”, I had a concept of the person that was represented by my wife’s name, and it would just be weird for it to change.

But — to the actual results, what the hell?  Forced named changes?  Sometimes I am really shocked by how quickly people go from “this is my preference” to “and it should be forced on others.”  Given this line from the article:

About 70% of Americans agree, either somewhat or strongly, that it’s beneficial for women to take her husband’s last name when they marry,

I’m not sure if the “half of the respondents” mean from the 100% or the 70%, but that’s still a huge chunk of people who think “I am so right that my preference should be forced on others.”  Scary!  But I can see how it happens — I’ve had people who can’t understand that I could support marijuana legalization but not want to use it myself.  For many people, there seems to be only the agree-allow and disagree-prohibit decision spaces — the concept that one could have a wish for a society that does not enforce one’s preferences seems strangely lacking.

The one point on which I completely agree with name-modification is the one Megan points out:

As a practical matter, I suspect that name changing will endure, because hyphenation is not a stable equilibrium, and it’s really quite useful for everyone in the family to have the same last name.

Definitely — but it’s certainly possible to have a family in which the children have one name, but that one of the parents goes by a different name in certain contexts.  I certainly grew up that way, and it was a convenient method of screening calls — if a caller asked for Mrs. Moore, it was probably related to something with us kids, if they asked for Dr. [my mother's maiden name], then it was work related.  It’s no stranger than someone being called by their first name in one context, their title in another, their last name in still another, and finally “mom” by one’s children.

One of the most interesting things in the Harry Potter series is the parade of negative adult stereotypes — especially in the most recent movie.  Yes, I know I’m like, what, years behind on J.K. Rowling analysis, whatever.  But it’s not something you really see often in children’s (or even young adult) books.  The most recent episode has a character you’d call a “good ole boy.”  These aren’t exactly types that you’d often seen in children’s books, because they assume a level of understanding about how the adult world works that most adults don’t believe children possess.

Previous episodes had callous and prying reporters, corrupt and incompetent authority figures, over-zealous prison wardens and sadistic power-hungry, Machiavellian types.  I don’t know to what extent the kids who read the books grasp the specifics of these characters, or how well they equate them with real world figures, but I’ve found that most of the time, kids understand a lot more than you think they do.  But the most interesting thing is that all of these types epitomize something you rarely see in children’s material: good intentioned people causing evil.  While of course the series has its all-encompassingly evil villain, there are many characters who cause bad or evil results while intending to do good — something that lots of adults aren’t even prepared to accept.  Witness the moronic response to (again, 2 years out of date on this reference) Will Smith saying:

“Even Hitler didn’t wake up going, ‘Let me do the most evil thing I can do today’.  I think he woke up in the morning and using a twisted, backwards logic, he set out to do what he thought was ‘good’”

You can follow the link, but basically it’s what I can tell to be a totally functional adult who has never heard the phrase “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”  The theme seems to be: “but bad people can’t have good intentions!   Wanting to do the right thing is the same thing as doing the right thing!  Hitler woke up everyone morning and kicked as many puppies as he could find!!!”

Anyway, this is important because “good people with good intentions can do bad things” is one of the most important lessons that someone can learn (obviously many adults have not) — and it’s great to see an ostensibly child-oriented book/movie make this point: no one ever thinks they are the bad guy.  But lots of today’s children are going to grow up to be the bad guys in someone’s story, and if Harry Potter helps them even a few of them realize it, then well, good for you, J.K. Rowling.

Update: There’s also the subtle critique of even the positive adult characters: that they basically use (though I think this is more a requirement of featuring children as active main characters) the children in the book as their pawns in their dangerous power struggles.  Throughout the series, the children are regularly on the brink of death, and quite a few of these times it is because of the ignorance or arrogance of even the good guy adults — or, often, even at their direct insistence.  The saintly Dumbledore of the most recent movie drags a teenager into a den of aquatic killer zombies and nearly gets him killed, just because he felt he couldn’t trust someone else.  Classy.