Conservatives, liberals...and scuba diving

Most comparisons between liberals and conservatives are aimed at proving that one or the other is in the wrong on all things always.

I disagree. Instead let me offer up...scuba diving as a way to understand the difference.

I'm a scuba diver. If you're not, and you're a liberal, your reaction is likely to be "Wow--I'd like to try that sometime. Sounds exciting." If you're a conservative, your reaction is likely to be "I like watching undersea stuff on the Discovery Channel, but that sounds really dangerous. Aren't you worried about sharks?"

Neither of those reactions is wrong. Scuba diving is a lot more dangerous than walking through a garden. And while it is exciting to try, people prone to panic shouldn't do it. Nor should those with certain medical conditions.

So I tell people good scuba divers are a blend of liberal and conservative, actually. Divers have to be both adventurous and methodical. Those who are adventurous without being methodical soon die, to put it simply. OTOH, those who are methodical without being adventurous just stay home and watch the Discovery Channel.

And while you're diving, you have to constantly monitor your nitrogen absorption, amount of air remaining, ascent rate, condition of your ears and other organs, water temperature, currents, surge, where your dive buddy is and how he/she is doing, possible dangerous critters/conditions nearby, and more. Good divers deal with all this through thorough training, so we can also enjoy the dive--the purpose of all that preparation and work.

So while diving might seem to be a liberal activity--the adventurer/explorer thing--you won't survive unless you dive like a conservative--the methodical/careful/detail-oriented thing.

And not only are good divers a blend, so is a good electorate, and for similar reasons.

With one caution: as someone said, when you're on thin ice, the prudent thing to do is run like hell!

Thus I think Obama actually did the prudent, conservative thing with the huge trillion-dollar bailout; as did the Fed.

After the stock market crash of 1929, the Hoover administration did what seemed to them to be the prudent, conservative thing, prioritizing keeping down inflation and debt. But it turned out that while those are the prudent things to do in normal times--and I agree that they are--they aren't, and weren't, the prudent things to do after a crash.

This runs counter to a conservative's intuition, so I sympathize with conservatives' extremely suspicious reaction to what the Obama administration is doing. But our instincts were honed in simpler circumstances, and they sometimes mislead us.

So when you're talking with conservative friends and relatives, agree with them that in normal times we need to balance the budget and keep down inflation. That way you establish a point of common agreement. Then go and build as much common agreement as you can before you get to the things you disagree about.

I'd go so far as to say that conservative (not Conservative, but actually conservative) principles should always be considered in politics.

And then, when you're about to dive into controversy, see if you can get them to agree with the thin ice analogy--that sometimes the conservative thing to do is to act quickly, as when the house is on fire, or there's an earthquake. And this was a financial earthquake.

Lastly, for conservatives reading this--most of what I said applies in the other direction when you're talking to liberal friends and relatives. It is liberal--if not Liberal--t0 take the other side's points seriously. We are talking about a major revision to our healthcare system. Personally I think we need to do it, since the current system isn't sustainable economically. But that's no excuse to be blithe about it.

Neither side should resort to namecalling, even though this is something we all feel very strongly about--because this is something we all feel very strongly about. And the best way to do that in either direction is to start by seeking common ground. A good start might be to denounce undemocratic actions by both sides.

No government works exactly like anyone would like it to. But imperfect as it is, it beats no government. If you don't think so, move to Somalia for a month.

Urge your conservative relatives to keep watching Fox News

One commentor to one of my posts said:

>>I hope you don't mind if I use some things you said...my parents are Republicans but open to Democratic ideas. They just need to stop watching Fox News. <<

But actually you should encourage them to keep watching Fox News--but then to go to www.Factcheck.org and www.Politifact.com for a reality check.

Offer to watch a show they watch onc day and record it. Then do the factchecking yourself as well.

Make your central point not that Fox News isn't liberal...duh. Make it that Fox News isn't conservative either.

After all, it's not conservative to lie. It's not conservative to shill for special interests--especially when those special interests' interests directly oppose the interests of your relatives. And it's not conservative to be divisive--to constantly seek to make half the country hate the other half...to get close to incitement to riot.

It's conservative to be traditional, to question change, to value decorum and law and order, to be wary about new things. That's not bad. We need people in society to do that so we don't go chasing off after every novelty. Just as we need liberals to keep exploring the new things and report back on what seems to work.

Don't ask your relatives to become liberal. Ask them to become conservative...that is, to be true to conservative principles. When right wing loons disrupt town hall meetings and shout down the other side--how is that conservative? Don't let your relatives defend this with claims about Democratic healthcare reform proposals--they may be right about that, they may be not, but it's a different topic.

A true conservative won't "take it to the streets" unless all forms of redress within the system have been denied him. The voices on the radio say this is exactly the case, but they lie of course. Hoots and catcalls and shouting downing--this must make your conservative relatives shudder. As well they should, because it goes against their principles.

This is a wedge you can use to show how their beloved party has been taken over by the loons.

Look at the public works and the progressive taxation under Eisenhower. Ask what happened to the party of Eisenhower.

Finally, point out how in previous campaigns the Republican Party kept pointing out how personal character was a good guide to deciding who to vote for. They did this especially when Bill Clinton was running and during his presidency, due to his notorious zipper problem.

Yet they're strangely fallen silent about personal virtue today. Possibly because so many prominent Republicans who bragged so loudly about their own virtue got caught with their own pants down--literally. And possibly because the current president's personal life is exactly what conservatives say should be the personal life of a public official.

Obama is undeniably a family man. He loves his wife and children and they love him. He has never strayed--not a hint of scandal in his family life. Nor has he been divorced and remarried, like, for example, Newt Gingrich and John McCain--and so many other prominent GOP officials.

If personal virtue is a guide to public trust when the Democratic president is a bit of a stray cat at home, then personal virtue should be a guide to public trust when the Democratic president is exactly the kind of family man conservatives admire.

See the pattern? Honor your relatives' conservative principles. Praise them for being personally trustworthy. Admit that society needs them, and point to the times in your life that their solidity was a boon to you. Then make them apply those conservative principles to politics, instead of the tribal principles Fox News encourages (i.e., anything my people do is OK and justifiable, no matter how heinous, while anything the other side does isn't OK even when it is OK).

Now go out and talk to Uncle Jack! He'll thank you someday.

BTW the whole point of this blog is to help people talk with zealots--both right and left.

healthcare reform and small businesses

One thing this mega-recession has proven conclusively is the irrationality of \"the market.\" Same here. Most small businesses will benefit from the healthcare reform currently in the works, yet I'd wager most small business owners think destruction awaits them.

They're wrong, but don't believe me--or anyone else with an axe to grind. If you get most of your information and talking points from partisan media, you're part of the problem. I don't care whether you're a Democrat like me or a Republican like my spouse.

And it's so easy to factcheck the claims made by both sides. Start with www.factcheck.org and wwww.politifact.com. The former has established itself as a well-funded, scrupulously nonpartisan source of truth about politicians' claims, and Politifact won a Pulitzer this year, and is just as nonpartisan. It has the added benefit of gauging not just truth or falsehood, but everything in between.

Politifact has revealed many an untruth or half-truth on the Demos' side, from Obama on down. But it's the Republican side's claims about healthcare reform that so often fall in the whopper \"pants on fire\" category.

It's like comparing an airport pickpocket with Al Capone, like comparing someone who's sliming you vs. someone who's coming at you with a chainsaw.

So even though there are no pure angels in this debate, overall, small businesses are better off siding with the Demos--and putting in their constructive two cents' worth on what they need from healthcare reform instead of blindly opposing everything.

As for the Republican Party...it was once a conservative organization, in the actual dictionary meaning of the word \"conservative.\" It was the party of Teddy Roosevelt and Dwight D. Eisenhower. Now both would be drummed out of the party. It has ethnically cleansed itself of centrists. The Demos are, speaking exactly, the distinct lesser of two evils.

One last point: did anyone notice there are other industrialized democracies on this planet--every single one of which has a more universal, more cost-effective healthcare system than us?

If we did nothing else but adopt any one of these countries' proven systems we'd probably do better than anything either of our parties has cooked up.

Take the Netherlands' system. It's based on heavily regulated private health insurance. Their citizens pay half what we pay for healthcare, even though their poorest are subsidized. Their population lives longer and healthier. And every single citizen of their country has their own private physician.

By the way, have you noticed that not one of these other democracies' electorates have dumped their system in favor of ours? Vast majorities of voters in all these countries overwhelmingly prefer their systems to ours. Some are socialized, some just regulated. Yet all beat ours. Every single one.

The Republican ads would have you believe these folks are praying for our system.

Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Healthcare reform

My fellow Democrats: We're in for the fight of our lives. I know more about what we're up against than most Democrats, because I'm married to a staunch Republican, attend a church that's 90+% Republican, and have many friends among them. I'm also a sociologist by training and a debater by practice.

Based on all this, here's some heartfelt advice:

1. Don't call them racists.

It's a Rovian trap to do so--one set by the Republican leadership and their healthcare denial industry paymasters. They never, ever say \"We hate Obama because he's black,\" even if everything they do would make it reasonable to think so.

But when you call them racists, you've just changed the topic from healthcare reform to a territory they can defend. And while you're trying to prove they're racists, the RNC will be rubbing its hands, as the topic of healthcare is forgotten.

2. Don't let them call Obama and the Democratic Party and you socialists.

And they will. Count on it. I usually say: \"Socialism means ownership of business by government. Democrats don't want to own it. We just want to regulate it. We tried business without regulation twice in the last century. It got us the Great Depression and now the worst recession since that. But help me out. Republicans seem to want ownership of government by business. What do you call that?\"

And as Krugman points out, they don't want \"socialized healthcare\" but they're often on Medicare.

The other advanced countries--all democracies--have everything ranging from heavily regulated private systems to mostly socialized ones. All of them are far cheaper than our system; all of them have better health outcomes than our system. And not one of those countries' electorates have ever shown the slightest interest in adopting our system.

Guess why? They don't want to die while some for-profit insurance company denies your request for a new kidney, hoping that if they slow-foot your claim you will in fact die before they're forced to honor it.

And by the way...cops and firemen are \"socialized safety.\"

3. They'll say most Americans are happy with their current healthcare.

I say wait 'till you or a loved one gets really sick. After all, if you ran a health insurance company, and your only goal was profit, what would you do when a customer got really, really sick?

You'd get rid of him, using your army of bureaucrats whose main job is to find excuses for recission--that's cutting off someone's insurance by saying you didn't dot an \"i\" somewhere on your application.

That's why I call these companies the \"Healthcare denial industry.\" Very few people who've actually had catastrophic illness are happy with their healthcare insurance. And even those who say they're happy may not have noticed how their healthcare premiums have doubled in the last few years, because it's why you didn't get a raise--it's often hidden in your overall compensation.

4. They'll say they don't want the government telling them when to die, and as Krugman points out, even Republican congressmen are saying this.

People this far gone can rarely be reached, but I just say \"The people you think are on your side are actually vampires sucking your blood; the people you think are out to destroy you and America are actually trying to save you--and you're throwing away the life vest they've thrown you because the predators pretending to be your friends told you it's a bomb.\"

Bottom line: the Republican healthcare plan is the alternative to the Democrats' attempt at healthcare reform. What's that plan, you say? Easy. It's the healthcare reform plan Congress passed during the 12 years the Republican Party controlled Congress and the six years it controlled all three branches of government:

[nothing]

That's right, folks. That's their healthcare reform package. Nothing. Excuse me if I don't include their pharmaceutical industry giveaway that masqueraded as Medicare drug assistance. Other than that phony plan that ordered government agencies to pay whatever price the drug companies chose to charge...nothing.

The healthcare denial industry has grown to swallow up 1/6 of the entire American economy, gutting our competitiveness on the world market, through keeping things exactly as they are. Without healthcare reform the current system will take up 1/3 of the entire economy in a few years.

It's unsustainable. You think Medicare and Social Security are headed for trouble? That's nothing compared to this.

Most of all, the Republicans want their rank and file to think we Democrats are their enemy; that we want to turn America into some alien place they won't recognize.

And they want Democrats to treat Republican rank and file as their enemy, so we'll never realize we both have the same enemy: the bloodsucking billionaires who pull the strings in the shadows. They're practising divide and conquer. And they're very, very good at it.

So remember who the real enemy is.

more on birthers

Have you ever crafted a long, detailed response to a comment thread for a column in a major newspaper, only to find the comments were closed just before you hit the Send button?

That just happened to me. It was a Washington Post column by Eugene Robinson titled "The Berserk Birthers" from Tuesday, August 4, 2009. If you look at the most recent page of comments before they closed it, you'll recognize the names I refer to here. But they're interchangeable, really, because there are only a handful of approaches the birthers use, and I think I've tackled them all here:

I assume that williepet1, ekim53, JustTruthPIs, workingclassslave, FactandTruth—and all their ilk—are patriotic Americans who want the best for our nation and sincerely believe what they're saying here.

So why do they believe this stuff? I'm still puzzling over this. Perhaps it's a need for "inside knowledge." Throughout human history otherwise intelligent people have fallen for some charlatan promising secret knowledge hidden from the rest of us. But I can't read my buddy's mind, so really I'm only speculating.

My spouse is a diehard Republican but doesn’t believe this stuff, so I can't ask her, and at the church we attend—which is probably 90% Republican—I get the impression that only a handful are birthers. But these are urban Republicans living in a college town in coastal California, mostly with advanced degrees. So they're not your typical redneck right winger.

What I do know is that the Republican Party leadership is pushing this (under the table of course, to keep their hands clean), and their most partisan adherents are running with it.

I wish they could trust FactCheck.org, a scrupulously nonpartisan Annenberg Foundation website. No partisan Democrat would think FactCheck leans left. For example, they detailed any number of "factual errors" and spin in Obama's claims about his healthcare proposals. Anyone who checks their back issues will see them tear into everyone from both parties' leadership down to Congressmens' campaigns on both sides--when the campaigns say things that just aren't so.

For Obama's birth, FactCheck.org actually flew staffers to Hawaii to inspect the original documents and supporting materials. Anyone who wants to can check all this out on their site. They've also detailed how the birthers' claims mutate constantly as fact-checking journalists research and debunk one claim after another. They're like the AIDS virus, which also mutates constantly to avoid our immune system's defenses.

Some details:

williepete1 trots out the "he's hiding it" ploy. As if the GOP's opposition researchers wouldn't have attacked Obama's bona fides in the election campaign if there were any truth to it. Yet willipete1 believes he's smarter than all the PhDs and private eyes of the Republican National Committee, amply financed by the Angry Billionaire's Club.

Or maybe williepete1 thinks the RNC and the DNC are in cahoots, guided by the Masons, or the Rothschilds Bank, or the alien entities in the Feds' basement (cue the Twilight Zone music)?

Ekim53 uses the "even if he's legit he's an unpredictable, dangerous socialist." The long-term Republican Party strategy has been to define every single real or potential Democratic presidential candidate as exactly these things, well in advance of the formal election campaign, regardless of who he or she really is.

For example, George McGovern was a war hero. He piloted B24 bombers over Germany for dozens of missions in WWII, while Ronald Regan acted in Hollywood. Yet you'd never know it from the campaigns. Likewise Kerry was a decorated war veteran, while Bush II was a high-class draft dodger. Yet they made McGovern and Kerry into mentally unstable Com-yew-nist America-haters. And the draft dodgers into war-heroes.

Socialists want government to own business. Democrats just want to regulate them—to avoid massive recessions. Republicans want business to own government. What's the name for that?

The fruit of the RNC multigenerational investment in Democrat candidate character assassination is folks like williepete1, who believes the people trying to save him are out to get him, while the people he's defending really are. Apart from the sheer evil of the RNC, you've got to hand it to them—like John Dillenger, they're very good at their work.

JustTruthPIs makes the same claims as williepete1, only with more words. He also had to believe that he's smarter than the entire staff of the Republican National Committee, or that the committee is part of some monstrous conspiracy—possibly to fatten Americans up for aliens' dining pleasure…

Ditto workingclassslave, only snarkier.

Lastly, to FactAndTruth: There is no way anyone can abrogate a natural-born American citizen's citizenship if he's under 18. Not a stepfather. Not another country. No one. This isn't rocket science law—it's basic stuff. Why don't you get it?

Honestly, you need to seek qualified help. Do you have a pastor you can talk to? A sane spouse? As it stands you're embarrassing yourself, and every response just digs the hole you're in deeper.

If you want to get to China, book a flight.

Birthers Shmirthers

It's called Situational Narcissism when someone--usually a CEO or a celebrity--surrounds himself with toadies, and eventually comes to believe he's infallible.

I think political zealots get into a similar state because today you can arrange to get all your news from TV, radio, network and book sources that pander to your biases, be they left wing or right wing.

Once inside the Zealot Zone they egg each other on, spinning more and more outre theories in a race to the ideological bottom (wherein dwell the Birthers).

It really started when Reagan killed the FCC Fairness Doctrine, enabling the spread of right wing radio, funded by the Angry Billionaire's Club.

And though Internet advocates thought it would enhance diversity of information, the exact opposite has happened. It's possible to surround yourself only with sources that agree with you, and demographic movements have also trended toward purer and purer Red and Blue counties across the country.

I've seen this at work. I attended a conservative political forum recently, and afterward people chatted with each other. It was as if they were vying to see how far out their conspiracy theories could be spun.

It was like back fence gossip at its most poisonous.

But it's wrong to focus on the Birthers. They're just the foot soldiers in a long-term strategy by the Angry Billionaire's Club, aimed at delegitimizing not just Obama but all future potential Democratic presidential candidates, and the party's leadership as well.

See, you get to power in America by one of two routes: forge a centrist majority, as Obama did, or build a partisan crusade that demonizes the other side, as Bush 43 did under Carl Rove's tutelage.

The Republicans have evidently chosen the latter as their 2010/2012 strategy.

Do this and you wind up with roughly half the country despising you. But this route's goal is only 50.01% of the vote, and what 49.9% of the country thinks of you doesn't matter in the slightest.

For 2010 the Republicans left in Congress need to keep their seats, which are nearly all in bright Red areas. So for that they've chosen a howling crusade with pitchforks and torches, laying siege to Obama the America-hating foreign mole Antichrist up in the castle.

They do this by attacking the person's strongest points, not his weakest. Obama is a gifted speaker--so you make that seem strange. Like he's a Svengali, and his supporters hypnotized sheeple. He's a better and more devoted family man than a majority of Republican Congressmen. There isn't the faintest whiff of scandal to exploit there, but they can make him seem like a foreign family man with a foreign family, trying to turn America into a foreign country--at least to the party faithful. He tends to give substantive answers, so they paint him as a boring double-dome. They don't attack his nonexistent military record because it's not a strong point, just as they attacked Kerry's because it was.

None of this makes sense if your goal is centrist consensus. But it's perfectly rational if you've rationally chosen a rabidly partisan tack.

Sure, only 28% believe he's a furriner. But many more than that just aren't sure. They're uneasy about him. That's the idea. Make the faithful rabid and the moderates fearful and unsure enough to opt for the devil they know.

You can see the same approach playing out with healthcare reform.

campaign

Who says America's Angry Billionaire's Club is short-sighted? They've invested at least 40 years in a marketing campaign aimed at convincing Americans that government is always the problem, private enterprise always the solution. With healthcare It paid off in 1992, and it's likely to pay off now.

The Angry Billionaire's Club doesn't need any government services, so America doesn't need them.

Evil Republicans

When we Democrats talk about those evil Republicans we're making a big, big mistake. We have to make a clear distinction between the Republican Party leadership and most rank and file Republicans.

I know a lot of Republicans personally, and I've known many of them for decades. Nearly all of them are honest, upright people you could trust with your last dollar. They might not make the best companions for a trip to the Burning Man festival, or to watch some sex/drugs/rock&roll-drenched, plotless avant-garde movie with. But they might be great to go scuba diving with (and I speak from personal experience), or to see a well-made, mainstream PG-13-rated Hollywood movie with. Or to be in a baby-sitting co-op with.

True, they do generally oppose most Democrats on a variety of social and fiscal issues. We are in different parties for real reasons. But few rank-and-file Republicans are out to rob us blind--unlike the GOP leadership.

And when we lump them all together, we reinforce the Republicans' sense of tribe--that America=the Republican tribe, while the Democratics en masse=an occupation of "our" country by people with alien values who hate America and whose leader and representatives must be opposed in every way possible.

When we reinforce this us vs. them mentality, we don't get healthcare reform. We don't get Wall Street reform. Or if we seem to, we get gutted versions of what we really need.

If not for this, there are many issues we could cooperate on, and they'd be more willing to reform their own party. Wouldn't it be great for everyone if the GOP became less like the Party of Palin and more like the Party of Eisenhower?

The first step for Democrats is ceasing to tar all Republicans with the same brush. Always refer to the Republican leadership when that's appropriate. Find the areas of common ground that we share. Republican voters don't want lying, demagoguic leaders shilling for special interests any more than we do. Help them realize our tribe is America, not any political party.

George Washington's farewell address warned the American people about "factions." Prophetic words.

The Most Important Problem on Earth

The Palestinian Problem appears to be the most important issue on Earth to Arab Muslems, Wahhabists and Salafists everywhere, Jews everywhere, and partisan zealots--left and right--in Europe and America.

But in the hierarchy of the world's problems it's a blip, folks.

Even if all the claims of Jewish mistreatment of Palestinians were true, those crimes are dwarfed by what people in power are doing in the eastern Congo, Darfur, Burma, Uganda and many other places. They're also dwarfed by how Muslim parents sexually mutilate their daughters in the millions--literally--across Africa.

Or if you consider sheer suffering, we'd alleviate more by supplying mosquito nets to the regions suffering from malaria and dengue fever than by any sort of settlement in Palestine/Israel.

And if you consider long-term, large-scale dangers to civilization, we should focus on the carbonation of the world's oceans (caused by CO2 dissolving into the water, altering its acidity), which will almost certainly kill off all the world's coral reefs and shellfish within a few decades, an ecocidal catastrophe that will cause immense suffering to vast portions of humanity that depend on those ecosystems for most of their protein.

Throughout the blogosphere partisans fulminate about those wicked Zionists. Those barbaric Palestinians. When the one billion humans who go to sleep every night desperately hungry would think they'd died and gone to heaven if they could live like Palestinians or Israelis.

Above all else, the world contains roughly FIVE BILLION more people than it can actually sustain, and because of this and the unspeakably selfish and shortisighted practices of powerful individuals around the world, Earth is experiencing the largest mass extinction of species since the asteroid that killed off the dinosaurs. And if you think that isn't coming back to bite us--even if you only care about humans--you're as shortsighted as the Indonesian and Brazilian agribosses burning down their countries' forests on a vast scale.

So yes, everyone in Israel/Palestine--about the size and population of the San Francisco Bay Area--should learn to get along with each other. But it should be around #100 on everyone's list of 100 Big Problems.

But since so many Arabs believe this is the biggest world problem ever, here's a solution: have the Jews they drove from all the Arab countries with just the clothes on their backs give up their Right of Return to those countries--along with their descendants--in exchange for the Palestinians who were driven from Palestine/Israel giving up their Right of Return. A few more Israelis were dispossessed, but it was roughly 800,000 each way. Then let the Palestinians emigrate en masse to those countries (along with their descendants).

Sure, it isn't fair. They want their ancestral homes. And I don't deny their claim. I just deny the realistic possibility of the Israelis packing up and moving to...where? At least the Palestinians would be moving to countries whose militias wouldn't murder them on sight, as would happen if the Israelis tried to return to their homes in Morocco/Libya/Tunisia/Egypt/Lebanon/Syria/Jordan/Iraq/Yemen etc.

And it's not as if lobbing tin cans full of nails and gunpowder at the Israelis is going to make them leave. Get real. Palestine is jam-packed and the average huge family size of Palestinians is making Palestine packed-er and packed-er. But there's plenty of room elsewhere in the Arab world. We just need to overlook the civil wars instigated by Palestinian migrants in Jordan and Lebanon.

Bottom line: the quest for justice and the nursing of historical wrongs is a luxury this suffering planet just can't afford. While we're squabbling the Earth is about to rise up and smite us. Then there won't be a place for anyone to live. Get your priorities straight.

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I originally wrote this entry as a comment on a NewYorkTimes column.
Someone who read that navigated to my blog and sent a comment. However, it contains an obscenity so I won't include it using Google's "publish" option, which doesn't let me edit comments. Here's what the guy said with the naughty word excised:

My tax dollars do not pay for the other stuff you mention. The other stuff you mention does not make a billion people hate my country. The other stuff you mention is all straw.

I bet you are a jew. Jews seem to love straw arguments when it comes to anything addressing their crimes. Why defend the undefendable when you can just reel off a litany of others [censored word] behavior. Do two wrongs suddenly make a right? If you are a jew the answer appers to be a resounding YES.

I could care less who kills anyone elsewhere on the planet. As long as they don't do it on my dime.

Was it an accident that you never mentioned that Israel's crimes might matter to people in the USA because we pay for them? I don't think so.

I think you left that out because you are a fraud.

BTW. Cutting and pasting your blog entry into the comments section of the NYT's is weak.


What's interesting to me about this comment is the underlying idea that individual Americans should get to tell the government how to spend their tax dollars. Well, we do. They're called elections. However, when a majority elect representatives who'd promised to spend our tax dollars in ways we don't like, we have to live with that. It's called living in a democracy, for which the key is abiding by the results of elections when the other side wins. And if our representatives spend our taxes in ways different than what they promised, we can impeach them if enough people object, or turn them out in the next election.

It seems like people should understand this, but both right wing and left wing zealots constantly harp about "their" tax dollars. But they aren't ours--not individually. The taxable part of our income belongs to the People through our representative constitutional government. We pay them in exchange for the benefits of being American citizens. I've traveled in many countries, and I'm constantly thankful that I'm an American citizen, and I'm glad to pay my fair share--even though, like every single other American, I would spend those tax dollars differently than the government does in some respects.

As for this person's interest in whether I'm a Jew or not--what bearing does that have on the validity of my arguments or the truthfulness of the facts I cite? Now if I'm parrotting the ideas of some Jewish organization, that could be relevant. But I don't know of one single Jewish organization that says what goes on in Israel is unimportant--as I say here. Nor have I ever read a letter to the editor or a forum entry by a self-identified Jew who said this. So it seems illogical for this person to claim I'm a Jew in some way that's relevant to the discussion.

It seems more logical to assume that this person doesn't like Jews for some reason. I don't get this either. Jews gave America its most patriotic music (such as Aaron Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man), and as the hero says in Spamalot, you can't put a play on Broadway without a Jew...American culture wouldn't be distinctly American were it not for the contributions of Blacks and Jews, and that's key to what distinguishes us from European culture. Have you seen Europeans try to dance to rock 'n roll? It's hard to look at without wincing.

He does allude to the fact that America supports Israel to the tune of about $3.5B a year. That's a lot of simoleans. However, we spend a comparable amount on surrounding Arab countries. Does he propose that we cut out all foreign aid everywhere, or just to Israel? The latter seems to be the implication. But if so, why single out Israel? Why not at least mention Egypt/Jordan etc.? It's not as if they aren't police states that commit crimes against humanity on their own people every day (including Egypt's current economic destabilization of its Coptic Christians).

And look what we spend on Iraq. Does he realize that one thing the Iraqis have done with their new-found freedom, courtesy of us spending a gazillion bucks to liberate them, is to kill or drive out Iraq's nearly one million Christians, most of whose families had lived there for millennia. How's that for a use of our tax dollars? That strikes me as far more significant than Israel's treatment of Palestinians, even if you agree with the Arab League's claims re: Israel.

As for "Israel's crimes"--well, as opposed to what other country? I haven't forgotten Israel attacking a U.S. Navy picket boat some decades ago, killing several American sailors. That was a crime covered over for political reasons. But I don't think this writer is referring to this incident. Treatment of Palestinians? That's Hitler's fault. He murdered all the gentle Jews of Europe. The Jews tough enough to survive his death camps emigrated to Israel, and the Arabs' War Without End against them hasn't made them softer. The Settlers include some murderous bullies, but they aren't representative of Israelis as a whole. And as my whole blog entry points out, their "crimes" are inconsequential in a world context--including a world context that's only concerned with the behavior of countries we send a lot of tax dollars to.


Lastly, I copy and paste (not cut and paste--think about it) many of my newspaper comment entries into my blog. How is that weak? I wanted a single place people (including me) could go to for my political writing. It's this. Here. There are numerous unique entries here as well, on most of the topics I write about. I think the whole thing is about the length of a novel at this point.

Gatesgate--or, is it safe to be a Black Man in America if you have a bad temper and like to get in cops' faces?

True enough, the Leftosphere has gone all atwitter over Harvard Professor Louis Gates' arrest in his own house, meanwhile ignoring the $1.4M/day marketing campaign by the healthcare denial industry against any and all reform efforts.

But it's also true that the Rightosphere has gone all atwitter as well over this deeply unimportant event, with it crowding out nearly everything else, with a focus on how, implicitly, President Obama is an Angry Black Man with a chip on his shoulder who hates cops and wants to take away our pen- er, guns, prior to surrendering America to Hugo Chavez and Osama bin Ladin.

Which sounds like hyperbole unless you watch/listen to the Rightosphere's media outlets, where they've done everything just short of calling for Obama's assassination.

So yes, Gatesgate is a Rorshach test of any given media outlet; yes, it's been way overblown; yes, Gates probably asked for it by pursuing the "do you know who I am" tack, which no Black should pursue anyway, for what should be obvious reasons; yes, Obama put his foot in his mouth, especially in the context of a literal life and death struggle with the healthcare denial industry's efforts to continue parasitizing American taxpayers, but...

any discussion of leftist posturing relative to this should be accompanied by noting the equally vile exploitation of this incident by the Angry Billionaire's Club and their government/media servants.

Pot won't be legalized because of my wife

Pot won't be legalized because of my wife. She has a 140 IQ and is a pragmatic business manager--and a veteran scuba diver, so it's not like she's some stick in the mud.

But she's also a devout churchgoing Republican who has never had a cigarette or an alcoholic drink in her life (nor even a cup of coffee), much less marijuana or its ilk.

She opposes legalization of all drugs including marijuana--so firmly that she won't even discuss the topic with me.

And that's why none of the arguments raised by marijuana legalization advocates matter much. The prison-law enforcement industry has succeeded in making marijuana legalization a tribal issue.

"They" want to smoke pot. "They" aren't like you and me. "They" are bums, hippies, anarchists, people with bits of metal on their faces and tattoos on their necks and elsewhere. "They" threaten to overwhelm Society in a flood of boundary-less behavior. "They" are Dionysian. "We" are Apollonian.

None of this is openly articulated, mind you. But I think multiple generations of conservatives are still recoiling in horror at the Summer of Love and all the hijinks that flowed from it.

Unlike so many Republicans who oppose pot but drink liquor, my wife is not a hypocrite. She opposes all mind-altering substances (except chocolate). So I can't even accuse her of having a double standard.

But nobody reading comment threads on marijuana legalization should underestimate the power of tribal thinking, and the efficacy of the prison-law enforcement industry at invoking it. It's not the bogus rationales they offer up that are doing the trick. It's really this less-public but more effective campaign that has worked.

And because the real campaign doesn't use PowerPoint presentations and public debates to achieve its goals, it's harder to refute it or even claim that such a campaign is going on. It's like the way things were in the South after segregation was outlawed. Redneck politicians wouldn't say "Vote for me and I'll keep

the N_____s down." They'd just say "Y'all know what ah stand for."

That's what we're up against. Any suggestions?

I do have one, though I haven't gotten much traction with it yet: decriminalize marijuana (which would still make advertising it illegal ), but treat all crimes as premeditated if they were committed under the influence of a mind-altering substance (including alcohol) that was taken voluntarily by an adult. So a drunk driver mows down someone in a crosswalk--that's Murder One.

But I still don't know how to overcome the tribalism that this debate has gotten imbued with.

healthcare reform

There has been an enormous amount of media coverage of the Democrats' attempts at healthcare reform. Big Health is currently spending over $1,500,000 a day to try to defeat every single proposal being made by the Democrats.

So in the interest of fairness I think we should examine the Republicans' healthcare reform plan, as evinced by GOP legislation during 2000-2006, when they controlled all three branches of government, and by the proposals they're making now.

Based on all that, here's what the GOP proposes:

1. Eliminate punitive damages in malpractice suits, so when the doc saws off your leg instead of removing your appendix, your lawsuit won't cripple him.

2. Otherwide, the current healthcare system in its entirely.

This is reinforced by right wing pundits, talk show hosts and congressmen declaring many times daily that we enjoy "the finest medical care system in the world."

And so we do--if you're a congressman or a multimillionaire or a public sector employee.

If you're employed by a company with full healthcare benefits, you may feel the same way--as long as you haven't needed those benefits in a big way. Otherwise you'll get to find out how our system rations healthcare--while carefully avoiding calling it that.

But even if you love your current healthcare provision, the fact is that healthcare costs are rising so rapidly that a major chunk of our gross national product is being diverted into healthcare industry profits, and the diversion is increasing steadily (hence the $1,500,000 a day being spent by the profiteers to preserve the status quo).

The Republicans talk about the Social Security and Medicare funding heading over the cliff. Well, that's nothing compared to what's going on in healthcare overall. It is unsustainable, and it's a major contribution to making our country's products uncompetitive in the world market.

The Democratic proposals thus far are very expensive, because they don't address a simple fact: our healthcare system runs with around a 30% overhead, while other nations--such as France--run with a 3% overhead. The difference is a mix of runaway profits for self-appointed middlemen, high medical professional salaries, administrative inefficiency, and a vast bureaucracy whose sole purpose is to deny medical benefit claims wherever possible, by hook or by crook, with a concomitant vast bureacracy required by healthcare providers to try to get claims approved.

If the Democrats adopt a single payer system we'd be able to provide proper healthcare for everyone with less rationing than now takes place--but it would displace a huge number of people, from minions to Masters of the Universe--now staffing this unnecessary bureacracy.

Other countries have made such a changeover successfully. We probably can't reduce costs unless we follow suit. The half-measures proposed so far don't tackle the inherent problem of trying to apply for-profit principles to healthcare--namely that healthcare customers comprise a captive market; they aren't really free to shop for healthcare when they need it, unlike, say, choosing to buy a house or a new car or a TV. This hidden truth invariably drives prices up in a for-profit marketplace.

So the Democrats propose measures that fall short of a solution, while the Republicans propose--nothing.

Ain't democracy grand? My fear is that vast wealth and skillful, relentless propaganda may be sufficient to get people to vote against their self interest. This is exactly what happened when Hillary Clinton crafted a healthcare system back in the 1990's. And it's close to happening again.

comprehensive immigration reform

we do need comprehensive immigration reform. Here's my proposal for doing that:

1. The primary purpose of American immigration policy should be to improve America. I'm astonished that I even need to say this.

2. America is improved by bringing in individuals and families with skills and resources that America needs, and by not bringing in those with liabilities that harm America.

3. Therefore, when someone applies to immigrate, they should be required to include everyone they ever plan to bring in with them. Then their application can be considered as group to evaluate whether it will be a net benefit to America to bring in that group. There should be no limitation on the size of the group--as long as it represents a net benefit for us. This would supplant the "family reunification" policy that currently represents the majority of legal immigration. It's good to bring in families--as long as the families represent a net benefit to America.

4. Also, the person applying with a group to be brought in under his/her umbrella must assume liability for the cost of all social services for that group until they become citizens, and the likelihood of any of them going on the dole after citizenship should be an important consideration.

5. America does not need unskilled laborers. With real unemployment pushing 20%--and with lower-class unemployment much higher--and with the recession impacting social services for poor people disproportionately--immigration of unskilled laborers should be banned until unemployment of American unskilled laborers drops below 4% (to pick a number out of the air).

6. America does need topflight scientists and engineers and other kinds of highly skilled workers. Immigration for these--including grad students in desirable areas--should be fast-tracked, except for Chinese immigrants, who need extra security checks, given the success of Communist China at sending spies here.

7. America is a nation of "melting potted" immigrants--not of enclaves of hyphenated special interest groups. America has been the most successful nation on Earth in assimilating immigrants (in strong contrast with Europe), largely because immigrants have fanned out across the country instead of concentrating in monocultural ghettos, as has happened in Europe.

8. Therefore we should re-establish national quotas, not to give whites preferences, as was the case before, but to ensure maximum diversity, both as a source of multicultural vigor and to prevent the formation of Quebec-style enclaves.

9. Accordingly, all immigration from Mexico and Central America should be banned indefintely, except for individuals with critical skills or great wealth (who will invest in America). We need a Latino "breather" until immigration from Africa, Asia, Brazil and Europe catch up. Reinstatement of Latino immigration shouldn't be considered until illegal immigration from Mexico and Mesoamerica is staunched.

10. Legal immigration via being born within our borders from illgal alien parents violates the first principle on this list--especially since most children born this way are the peasant children of peasant parents--a group we don't need more of. Unless the Supreme Court reinterprets the 14th Amendment to preclude such anchor babies, the Constitution needs to be amended to make it clear that the 14th doesn't include offspring of illegals.

11. The Constitution also needs to be amended to eliminate the loophole that currently counts illegal aliens in Congressional district apportionment. It gives political parties that benefit too much incentive to encourage illegal immigration.

12. The 25 million (give or take 10 or 20 million) Illegal immigrants now residing in America must not be granted amnesty because the last two times we tried it (the latest being in 1986) the result was a tidal wave of new illegal immigration. This policy would produce many individual tragedies--especially as regards children brought here illegally and are now culturally American--but this must be weighed against the far greater tragedy of more massive waves of illegal immigration.

13. The federal government must mandate adoption of e-Verify by states as a prerequisite to any state receiving Federal financial support.

14. The federal government must adopt a universal ID for American residents, as other advanced nations are doing. This doesn't require a card any more--biometric ID stations can be used, sidestepping the fake ID industry. Fuji has a palm vein reader that woupld require rearranging the veins in your hand to fool it. This ID should be a prerequisite for all social services, with the exception of emergency medical care--which would be provided, then the recipient deported if they're here illegally. This would also be a requirement for employment.

15. Illegal entry should remain a misdemeanor. But illegal re-entr should be a felony.

What illegal immigrant advocates don't say

Here are the principles you can derive from the posts of those who plead the case of the illegal aliens:

1. America has no right to choose who gets to emigrate here, possibly due to the doctrine of Original (American) Sin.

2. Instead, America's immigration policy should be determined by the governments and citizens of other countries--primarily Mexico.

3. Mexican peasants should be given preference over anyone else, including PhDs from Germany, successful artists from Japan, Indonesian peasants and PhDs--really, anyone.

4. The plight of potential immigrants is irrelevant unless they're Mexican, since so many people from so many countries are worse off than the average Mexican peasant.

5. The needs of American employers for skilled immigrants is irrelevant. Only employers needing scab labor to bust unions and drive unskilled American workers into poverty are relevant.

6. America's own lower classes--whites, blacks, browns and yellows who have a high school diploma or less--deserve to have their wages cut by 5-25%, as has happened since the 1986 amnesty produced a tidal wave of Mexican peasants (and Salvadoreans, Guatemalans etc.) flowing over our borders.

7. Amnesty is not amnesty, since it doesn't happen immediately.

9. Granting "it's-not-amnesty" to 25 million illegal aliens today won't inspire a tidal wave of new illegal immigration, even though the last two amnesties (the latest in 1986) did.

10. e-verify must be banned, because Mexicans don't like it, and their feelings trump the feelings of America's working poor--including many millions of blacks and at least a quarter of Americans of Latino background.

11. There is no such thing as overpopulation. The fact that Mexico's population exploded from 20 million in 1940 to over 100 million in 2000 is irrelevant. The fact that America's population has doubled in the lifetime of many WaPo readers is irrelevant. The fact that the world's population has increased sixfold since 1900 is irrelvant. The fact that the world is expriencing the largest species and habitat die-off in 65 million years is irrelevant.

12. The fact that the primary beneficiaries of liberal advocacy of illegals is billionaire CEOs...is irrelevant.

13. The fact that the American Southwest has undergone a radical demographic and cultural transformation in the last 30 years is a good thing, because Mexican culture is good and American culture is bad and deserves to die.

14. Letting 25 million Mexican citizens living here illegally jump the queue won't demoralize the millions of potential immigrants all over the world who patiently went through the immigration process. And even if it does, it doesn't matter, because most of them aren't Mexican, and only Mexicans' feelings matter.

15. Anyone who disagrees with all this is a racist, so anything they say--facts or logic--is irrelvant. You don't need to refute someone if you can attack their character. And if they do appear to be making sense, just howl racistracistracistracist until you drown them out.

Heart vs. Mind

Some say the Democrats are mindless, while the Republicans are heartless.

Nonsense. Both parties overflow with empathy.

They just differ in the targets of that empathy.

The Republican Party weeps for the oppression suffered by helpless billionaires, CEOs, officials in positions of great power; of oppression of the religion that over 2/3 of the nation belongs to; of the threat to institutions like Christmas that are only celebrated today by over 80% of Americans.

The Democratic Party weeps for the oppression suffered by public employee union members who make more than comparable private sectors employees and also enjoy lifetime security via lavish pension benefits; for the oppression of poor people (unless they're White); for the voting rights of American citizens who neglected to learn the language spoken by this country; for the rights of citizens of other countries who moved here illegally, even though their presence has resulted in wages for unskilled labor dropping 5-25%, thus pushing American lower-class workers into poverty--and the fact that they're here mainly because Mexico's population has exploded from 20 million in 1940 to over 100 million in 2000, and now it's exporting its overpopulation to America. Lastly, the Democratic Party weeps for everyone who's a citizen of this country who regards themselves as something else above being American--African, Latin, -of color-ed, or any other hyphenation that can be sliced off the body politic and granted special ethnic or racial favors for their group in exchange for their vote.

I'm so pleased to live in a country so overflowing with empathy on the part of both major parties. Just because a majority of Americans are left out of both parties' span of empathy shouldn't bother us. It's our job to give, just as it is theirs to take. Or so both parties' seem to think.

Yay.

Why should my taxes go to things I consider immoral?

Conservatives object vehemently to their tax dollars going to fund abortion.
Liberals object vehemently to their tax dollars going to fund the Iraq war.

Conservatives object vehemently to their tax dollars going to fund central payer-administered healthcare.
Liberals object vehemently to their tax dollars going to fund the "war on drugs."

Conservatives object vehemently to their tax dollars going to fund public school sex education.
Liberals object vehemently to their tax dollars going to fund abstinence-only "sexless education."

I heard a conservative caller on a talk show state flatly "I don't want my tax dollars to go to someone with a pre-existing medical condition."

Both liberals and conservatives talk endlessly about their rights--and the rights of those they favor--but they only talk about the obligations of the other side, and of those they don't favor.

-------------------------

But beyond our rights and obligations, all these demands about how tax money is to be spent/not spent raise deeper issues that I think matter even more than the hot button topics you see on placards and bumper stickers.

Which is--every time someone makes demands linked to taxation, they're saying:

"I have the right to specify what my tax dollars will and won't be spent on."

How would a democratic country apply that principle? These zealots are proposing that every taxpayer has the right to submit a list with his/her tax return, ordering the government to allocate that person's tax dollars exactly as that taxpayer demands.

Think about the bureaucratic nightmare. It would have to be tallied by hand, which would lead to errors, which would lead to demands for recounts.

And even if we could adminster such a system, it cuts the legs out from under the essence of democracy: the losing side takes its lumps.

When Bush won in 2000 by--as roughly half of Americans believe--Supreme Court fiat--you didn't see militias going to war with government troops. The losing side griped loudly but ultimately they accepted the results. Conversely, when the Antichrist won in 2008--according to a substantial minority of Ameircans--again you didn't see warfare on the streets.

Yet we keep getting these bogus tax dollar allocation demands.

I say to both sides: There has never been a single instant in American history when everyone agreed on everything government did with everyone's tax dollars. We all agree, as adults, to sacrifice some of our individual freedom in exchange for the benefits of being citizens of the most powerful and prosperous nation in history.

So grow up.

If you want to change law, campaign lawfully to change it. But stop talking about "your" tax dollars. Those tax dollars aren't yours. They're everyone's, just as you own a share of everyone else's tax dollars, as mediated by our elected government, operating under our Constitution.

And if you find another country is run more to your liking, feel free to move there (if they'll take you). Go. We have plenty of residents. We can spare you.

America and homosexuals

The Guardian (in the UK) published an editorial by a homosexual activist decrying the terrible situation for homosexuals in the US. Here's my response:

Is America heaven or hell for homosexuals? For this editorial writer the glass appears to be more than half empty. The commentors are all over the map.

Perhaps I can shed some light on this issue. I'm a native-born Californian who's lived in homosexuals' Mecca--the San Francisco Bay Area--for 40 years. I've also traveled widely, from Indonesia to the Netherlands and many parts of America.

To start working on an answer you have to realize the sheer scale of the nation we're talking about. The United States has 97% of the land mass of Continental Europe, and about the same population as Germany, the UK, France, Italy, Poland and Estonia combined.

The American South alone has a larger population than any but the biggest four EU countries.

This makes generalizations about America about as shaky as generalizations about the entire EU.

But you can be sure of some things.

1. It's possible to be murdered for being homosexual if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time, hanging out with the wrong people. This is especially true in areas with low education, low income, limited contact with people who are "different" in any way--especially in the deep South.

2. It's possible to live your entire live as a homosexual openly, without fear of discrimination or reprisal, in nearly every way, in nearly every college town and major metropolitan area in the country, outside the deep South (which I regard as a foreign country myself).

3. So a homosexual who's residentially mobile--and America certainly supports residential mobility--can live or move somewhere where it would be hard to find a more accepting environment on Earth. And these areas aren't tiny enclaves. Anywhere from Miami to Boston to Seattle to San Diego will work.

4. Acceptance of homosexuals has, overall, become the defacto norm in urban areas--less so in Black and Hispanic communities, which tend to be more culturally conservative. Hence the interesting phenomenon of American Anglican churches that reject having homosexual priests joining African Anglican organizations.

5. California--in many ways a leading indicator of social trends--has had several referenda on homosexual rights. The latest one, prohibiting homosexual marriage, passed by 53%. The preceding one, a decade or so earlier, passed by over 2/3 as I recall. This is in line with my own observations. It seems reasonable to conclude that another referendum in, say, five or ten years, will tip in favor of homosexuals. And even the current one explicitly upheld homosexual domestic partner rights, while denying them the marriage right per se.

6. Homosexual rights activists have in some ways been their own worst enemies. During the recent campaign in Calfornia there were widespread incidents of homosexual activists denying the right of free political expression to those who opposed homosexual marriage. Many thousands of lawn signs were stolen, cars with pro-Prop 8 bumper stickers vandalized, and Prop 8 proponents harassed and intimidated in significant numbers.

Today we're having a Gay Pride Parade in San Francisco. Most likely, as in past years, participants will succeed in replicating every conservative's worst nightmare of Sodom and Gomorroh, engaging in PDAs (Public Displays of Affection) that are considered unacceptable among heterosexuals in public by society at large, up to and including oral copulation. These parades provide fodder for conservative campaigns and figured prominently in Prop 8 marketing. I was listening to a liberal radio station talk show this morning that had a number of homosexuals calling in to state how much they thought these parades harmed their cause. They are truly the gifts that keep on giving for conservative anti-homosexual activists, along with the documented vandalism and harassment I cited.

So is the glass half full or half empty? Let me put it this way: if I were homosexual, living somewhere on the planet, I'd certainly consider moving to America. Probably not to a small town in Mississippi! But compared to most other nations (remember Ahmadinejad saying "We have no homosexuals" ?) this is a great place to be homosexual.

Homosexuals have yet to be formally accepted in the military. Some states deny them all domestic partner rights, while others confer all rights to them, while most are somewhere in between. If a homosexual couple moved into my neighborhood their homosexuality would be irrelevant to their neighbors--the concerns would be more like do their keep their lawn moved and not have parties that keep up neighbors who have to go to work the next day. In other words, exactly the same concerns people would have with heterosexual neighbors. And if they had children, their kids would be free to play with other families' children and vice versa. When they applied for a job the concerns would be can they do the job. Period. And I speak from personal experience.

I hope this gives folks in the UK a balanced perspective on this issue.

The Right doesn't like sociobiology (& neither does the Left)

Yesterday New York Times conservative columnist David Brooks wrote a column debunking evolutionary psychology. You can find it at:
(http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/26/opinion/26brooks.html?_r=1)

Here's my debunking of his debunking:

Wow. This was a breathtakingly shallow editorial. Brooks argues persuasively against an evolutionary psychology that no evolutionary psychologist proposes. In other words, he's committing the "straw man argument" fallacy, where you oversimplify and distort someone's position, then knock down the oversimplified distortion.

Oh, and it's actually sociobiology. That was the original name for this field, and it still fits it best. Sociologists, psychologists and anthropologists persist in trying to be the last dog to whizz on every intellectual fire hydrant, perpetually rebranding areas of interest that cross over those disciplines' traditional boundaries.

Sociobiology just says that to understand modern behavior, it helps to understand where it came from. Nobody says that we act just like Kenyan hunter-gatherers did 50K years ago. Moreover--and here's one reason why I prefer calling it sociobiology--we are designed from the get-go to function in groups--some sociobiologists might go so far as to call an individual human being the instantiation of his/her gene pool.

Thus altruism is perfectly understandable when you look on us as a pack animal whose children are utterly dependent on us far longer than any other animal.

As for our vaunted malleability--well sure...up to a point. Those who are most controlled by their primitive heuristics are those who deny their influence the most.

Thus I know I'm hardwired to lust after salt/fat/sugar/meat--all vital to have in small amounts in our ancestors' world. That knowledge helps me fight the urge to overindulge in all of those things--yet I'm still packing 25 lbs. of lard I shouldn't be carrying--and the odds are that half or more of those reading this know what I do and still carry spare tires too.

Brooks really needs to read two books before he says any more about this field: The Moral Animal, which speculates about human morality evolved, and how the ingrained instincts involved are mediated in today's environment; and Inevitable Illusions: How Mistakes of Reason Rule our Minds, by a cognitive psychologist at MIT, which shows how primitive heuristics built into our brains helped us survive back then but distort our understanding of reality now.

One example: every time you see a three-pronged electrical outlet a face-seeking heuristic in your brain lights up and demands to know if that's actually a face. It was a vital survival trait for our ancestors to see faces quickly and in shadows--and far safer to see more than really are there than to miss one. I know this, and yet every time I see a 3-prong outlet I still feel that heuristic lighting up.

So yes, we can and do adapt. It's in our nature to be adaptable. But if you know anything about object-oriented programming (okay, I live in Silicon Valley--so sue me), you can think of our mind as having these nuggets of primitive instincts with modern adaptations wrapped around them. The wrappers can't change the nuggest, but they do let us function. However, in many circumstances--especially if we're unconscious of them--they subtly reassert themselves.

Liberals loathed sociobiology when it came out, because they need philosophically to see Man as infinitely malleable--a blank slate free for any sort of social experimentation, with no innate racial or gender mental differences whatsoever.

Conservatives also hated it because they need to believe that we are moral free agents, each of us totally responsible for everything we say or do from the instant of our 18th birthday onward.

Both sides forget Santayana's definition of freedom: arranging your chains as comfortably as possible...

"You're a RACIST!"

Race-baiting is rarely productive--even when it is true. Because it always ends the discussion.

Liberals will absolutely never persuade conservatives of anything once they've called them a racist. All that's accomplished is making the other side furious--and making yourself look like a smug, self-righteous jerk in the eyes of those you seek to persuade.

Whereas if you challenge their assumptions or bring up relevant facts you actually might persuade that person.

Your choice--insult or persuade. Depends on maturity, I guess.

It should go without saying that when Conservatives calls Liberals "Socialist!" the same is true, conversely. Actually they've just about succeeded in making the term "Liberal" a curse word, such that many liberals call themselves "progressive"--a tribute to the success of the right-wing propaganda machine.

So I'm making a nonpartisan point.

Cuba--a new idea, for once

If we can have full commercial relations with corrupt, politically repressive countries like Saudi Arabia and Communist China, not only should we have the same with Cuba--it makes us look hypocritical and vengeful not to.

Pretty much all the complaints of the Anti-Castro crowd are true. So? If you think we should only deal with virtuous regimes, that would cut out many if not most of our current trading partners. Don't bother to argue against normal relations with Cuba unless you have a game plan that also includes cutting off China and Saudi Arabia, among others.

As for the OAS--every tinhorn quasidictator needs a big scary enemy to divert their people's attention from his own shady dealings and subversion of democracy. Chavez and other self-styled populists need America to oppose them, just as Bin Ladin does.

A good enemy is the first priority of rapacious pols. And we're the best--the biggest, the baddest, and with enough historical dirty dealings to let them build a plausible narrative in which we're the villain.

So we have to tread a careful path of neither kowtowing to these clowns--nor letting reflexive opposition to them dictate our foreign policy.

Lastly, as for Guantanamo--Cuba wants it back in the worst way. But I don't want to give it back to them. Close the prison and the naval base there--and turn it into the finest resort in the Caribbean, while normalizing relations with Cuba and offering a raft of well-paid jobs to Cuban "guest workers." Now wouldn't that grind the Castro brothers' grits? Guantanamo is a fine port and a short flight from the USA. It could be immensely profitable for us, and do more to subvert Cuba's dictatorship than all the ranting revanchists in Miami.

And we could up the current insulting $4K/yr. rent we pay Cuba for Guantanmo (I've heard they don't cash the checks), and instead give them, say, a 5% cut of profits generated by the resort. And make sure the Cuban people know about it.

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