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Clayton Cramer's BLOG |
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Clayton's commentary on news and events of the day. Broadly speaking, I'm a conservative with libertarian sympathies (getting more conservative as my children get older).
 Never forget! I'm running for Idaho state senate I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page).
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Saturday, September 06, 2003
Revisiting The McDonald's Lawsuit I received this letter yesterday, and I am blogging it today, after receiving permission from the author to do so, with his name on it. Dear Mr. Cramer, I'm In Shock At the Number of People Upset With My Attitude Towards Amazon's Sale of a Pedophile Justification Book I'm getting email from people who think that there's a First Amendment issue here. Nope. First Amendment only applies to governmental action--not a private company refusing to sell something, or private individuals promoting boycotts. I received this piece of email as well that seemed to think my position was internally consistent, but still wrong, for saying that Amazon.com shouldn't carry a pedophile book. The says: However, I would appreciate it if you retracted your comment regarding liberals in your latest post on the subject. I quote:"If Amazon.com sold a book titled, Fagbashing for Fun and Profit: How to Kill Homosexuals and Get Away With It or 99 Ways to Rape Women and Beat the Rap in Court, I would be just as incensed--and liberals would be hollering for Jeff Bezos' head on a platter, instead of making excuses for Amazon.com publishing this trash."My response was that: Neither work is likely to be taken seriously today, and at this point, selling them is a matter of historical curiosity. (Okay, in the Arab world, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion is still taken seriously, but not in the English-speaking world.) Do you honestly think that if Amazon.com were selling how-to books about raping women or murdering homosexuals that there wouldn't be an enormous uproar about it? Did you miss the uproar about the guy in Las Vegas who claimed to be selling chances to hunt "Bambi" (a pretty naked young lady) with a paintball gun and then have sex with her? It all turned out to be a hoax, but the liberals went beserk--and "Bambi" was supposedly a consenting female. UPDATE: It was nice to receive an email from a judge back East: Just wanted to encourage you in the boycott, not that you probably need it. This book just crosses a line for me, probably because as a prosecutor for nine years I saw plenty of cases of child rape, child porn, and the like. I cannot comprehend how Amazon can sell this book, particularly when they *know* they are losing revenue streams because of it. The Political Thought That Dare Not Say Its Name I'm sure by now that you've seen some mention of this elsewhere--I received notification about the same time as many other bloggers, but I was a bit busy yesterday. Censorship! A government university has told one of its professors to remove certain dangerous and offensive ideas from his blog on the university's server. After all, there are some ideas so horrifying that we just can't allow free speech! Of course, the censors are homosexuals. A Web log created by a business professor to express views on homosexuality and other issues has been removed from an IU server, after causing controversy and angering some on campus.This doesn't surprise me in the least. One of the reasons why I have gone from a "live and let live" libertarianism about homosexuality to a pretty strong hostility to it is because homosexual activists are astonishingly fascist in their notions of free speech. Even if you preface your disapproval of homosexuality with, "It's not the government's job to prohibit it," (as I used to) that's not good enough for the homosexual fascist movement. They will be content with nothing less than the complete suppression of free speech. Why? Because I think that many homosexuals know that there is something pretty sick about their movement, not necessarily their sexual act alone, but the behaviors that are disproportionate in the homosexual community (some of which have passed into heterosexuals because of homosexual dominance of the entertainment industry): promiscuity; piercings; coprophilia; cross-dressing; sadomasochism; extraordinary personal immaturity; the inability to decide whether groups like NAMBLA are good or bad. Make no mistake about it: even if many homosexuals are reasonably civilized people (and I have worked with a few over the years that were), the homosexual activists will use these same fascist techniques to achieve their ends. It is no suprise that the Sturmabteilung that assisted Hitler's rise to power was run at the top by a homosexual cabal. It is also no surprise that news stories such as this special report from the Bakersfield Californian about a gay cabal abusing boys and committing murder have been largely ignored by the national media. Is There a Translator in the House? I get a lot of spam--most of it irrelevant, some of it offensive, and some that makes me wonder if the Internet now has connections into alternate realities, such as this: Hello,And then I get stuff like this, that doesn't seem to have either a virus attached, or any obvious sales pitch. (It might be an argument for developing some sort of virus that locates, detects, and destroys rap in all digital forms.) austins the name spammins mAh game you mess wit da 47 man, pshh you aint g0t n0 plan step t0 mah elite mailin skillz, joo best head to da hillzzzzz when 47 gets j00 ya best call up yah crew, or imma come rat -ta -tat tat 0n y0 punk azzz with MAH GAT!Is it a threat? Does it legally constitute a threat if you can't understand that it's a threat? Something to Show Your Hunting Buddies Who Don't Think Gun Control Is Aimed At Them One of the recurring problems motivating hunters to be concerned about gun control is that they are convinced that gun control advocates aren't trying to stop hunting. But of course, gun prohibitionists aren't interested just in banning handguns, or "assault weapons," but all guns--as this news story reminds us: Bowing to neighborhood concerns, Wal-Mart promised Friday not to sell guns and ammunition at its first St. Paul store, which will open next spring in the Midway area.I guess this means that there aren't any hunters living in St. Paul? That's nonsense. Even in urban areas, there are large numbers of hunters who drive hundreds of miles to go hunting. I've never hunted, and I doubt that I ever will. But I make common cause with hunters on a lot of issues because I recognize that, to paraphrase Benjamin Franklin, "We must all hang together, or we will all hang separately." The totalitarian impulse that drives the most fanatical of gun prohibitionists can bear the thought that somewhere, someone might break the government's monopoly on deadly force. The same crowd that gets upset when police abuse their authority by beating up or killing a black guy, gets absolutely indignant when you suggest that the police shouldn't be the only people with guns. The Decline and Fall of Hillary The name, that is. Stuart Buck writes about the decline in popularity of the name "Hillary" from 1993 onward, as evidenced by the Social Security Administration's tracking of first names (presumably based on Social Security number assignments--which now must happen by age 2, in order to take a child as a deduction on your income taxes). Stuart Buck supposedly has a blog about this here, but I can't seem to connect to it. Here's a chart that shows the dramatic decline in "Hillary" as a first name--dropping completely off the top 1000 names list by 2002. This is a sensitive subject, because my daughter, born in 1983, is named "Hilary." Had we known what evil would appear on the political horizon in the 1990s with that name.... Friday, September 05, 2003
The Influence of the Media I ordinarily don't like the expression "think of it as evolution in action" because sometimes, otherwise intelligent people do really stupid things, and these are real people that are suffering. But here's an example that fits just a bit too well, and is a reminder of the powerful influence that entertainment has the impressionable and foolish: Doctors in Australia have urged people to not to attempt Jackass style stunts after a man burnt his genitals in a firecracker accident.And what, pray tell, might be an alternative explanation for this? Did he run out of toilet paper, and decided a lighted firecracker would be faster and more hygenic than using leaves? Is It Better To Be Feared Than Loved? Instapundit had a link to this article in the Telegraph yesterday, and it's really a valuable lesson: A spokesman for Mr Berlusconi said the prime minister had been telephoned recently by Col Gaddafi of Libya, who said: "I will do whatever the Americans want, because I saw what happened in Iraq, and I was afraid."Maybe Berlusconi is exaggerating, or even lying--but after the 1986 raid on Tripoli that put a bandage on Gaddafi's head, and killed one of his kids, Gaddafi seems to have learned that promoting terrorism isn't a good idea. It's nice to be loved, but realistically, in much fo the world, envy of the United States makes that impossible. I think it is better to be feared. The rest of the article is also quite interesting and valuable. The Italian prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi, believes the United Nations should intervene militarily wherever dictatorships abuse human rights.This will doubtless infuriate leftists everywhere--democracy and human rights as a unifying principle. Thursday, September 04, 2003
My Amazon.com Boycott I received a rather odd piece of email about my boycott of Amazon.com because they refuse to stop selling a book that advocates child molestation. The letter poses the rather interesting question: I've just discovered your site and find your beef with Amazon to be an issue I can't quite put to rest.Here's a simple rule: if a book promotes the abuse of others, no responsible person should be part of publishing, selling, or distributing that work. This was one of the reasons that Paladin Press paid out $8 million for publishing Hit Man: A Technical Manual for Independent Contractors some years ago. Paladin Press claimed that it was all a big joke, but the level of detail was high, and at least one contract murder committed by a reader of the book who became an "independent contractor" followed the book to the letter. I have some concerns about the effects of that sort of liability--easily corrected from the standpoint of legal liability by turning the book into fiction--but here's the harsh reality: a woman was murdered because of Hit Man, and there's no question that Hit Man played a part in what that killer did. The letter goes on: Even if we all agree that pedophilia is wrong, it would be quite a bit of work to weed the "bad books about pedophilia" out from the "good ones," and surely there would be a headache over the ones people can't agree on. Maybe you would assert that Amazon should not carry any of this particular publisher's material. Would that be fair?Would a serious examination of the problem of child sexual abuse be inappropriate to publish? No. But the reviews of the book in question--even the friendly reviews--make it clear that this wasn't a serious examination of the problem, but an advocacy book. If Amazon.com sold a book titled, Fagbashing for Fun and Profit: How to Kill Homosexuals and Get Away With It or 99 Ways to Rape Women and Beat the Rap in Court, I would be just as incensed--and liberals would be hollering for Jeff Bezos' head on a platter, instead of making excuses for Amazon.com publishing this trash. I hope that "Even if we all agree" is a rhetorical flourish--anyone who thinks that pedophilia isn't a great evil is really, really sick. I'm not interested in hearing from any of the 160,000 people that bought Boylovers and want to convince me that they are just like you and me. My mind is closed on this subject. Pedophiles need treatment, not support. If caught in the act, they need to stop, submit to arrest, or die. Is this simply an "isolated instance" where only one book could ever come into question for its offensiveness? I can't believe there aren't other books that deserve to be condemned for nearly identical reasons. What is the system that Amazon should have in place to address a concern such as yours?How about common decency? Whoops! Too late for that! The exchange you offer- your letter and their response- seems to me a case of bad theatre from the start because neither of you have read the book. Do you seriously expect them to stop selling a book because of a complaint from someone who can't even say "I have read this book?" Should they have to read every book they sell?They don't need to read every book that they sell, but when the positive reviews tell you it is a sympathetic account of the virtues of molesting children, it certainly seems like Amazon.com should at least take a quick peek to see what they are selling. I would like to think that the 160,000 copies sold is the reason that Amazon.com is selling this repulsive work--that's just plain old greed. The alternative is to think that they are selling it because they aren't upset about the content. Labels: child sexual abuse Prohibiting Animal Cruelty Over at The Buck Stops Here, Matt points out that there are some contradictions in attempts to justify laws against animal cruelty that don't rely on either religious beliefs (besides the ones that I blogged about here). An "animal rights" theory falls down because: But if one believes that animals have intrinsic rights (even if they're not equal to ours) and it is the duty of society to protect these rights, then society is duty-bound to protect seals not only from hunters, but from polar bears and orcas! Because human beings have intrinsic rights, the police are obligated to come to my aid whether I'm being attacked by an assailant or an alligator. It doesn't matter who or what is interfering with my right to preservation, the police will help me because they protect my basic rights. If animals had similarly intrinsic rights, it wouldn't matter what was hurting them, man or animal, either. But while the police will stop a man from beating a chicken, they won't stop the fox with a chicken in its jaws (except to protect the property rights of a rancher that owns the chicken).I hadn't thought of this point, but it's true. Much of the "animal rights" movement is driven by either hatred of humans (the Earth First! crowd), or an irrational love of cute and fuzzy animals (the bunnyhuggers). Supersizing The Lawsuits From Reuters: NEW YORK (Reuters) - A federal judge on Thursday threw out a revised lawsuit against McDonald's Corp . that accused the fast food restaurant of using misleading advertising to lure children into eating unhealthy foods that make them fat.Darn straight. There are two categories of people that get fat at McDonald's: adults, and children. Adults are generally considered to be responsible for their own actions. If you are gaining too much weight, step away from the restaurant! I would love to blame McDonald's, Jack-in-the-Box, or Carl's Jr. for the fact that I could stand to lose about 20-30 pounds, but I think it has a bit more to do with sitting in front of a computer eight hours a day, waiting for Korn shell scripts to run. (That's it! I'll sue every company that I've ever worked for!) Children are not generally considered responsible for their own actions; their parents are, instead. If your kids are getting too fat, it's time to exercise some parental responsibility on this. Stop taking them out so much, and reduce their spending money if they go there under their own power. Speaking of responsibility: when is someone going to hold the lawyers who file these suits responsible for forcing McDonald's to spend money defending a clearly frivolous lawsuit? Yeah, I know, McDonald's isn't poor, they can afford to spend gobs of money defending themselves, but at some point, there has to be a cost to wasting the time of the courts, and the defendants. Imagine how the left would feel if conservatives filed suits against the ACLU or the entertainment industry trying to hold them responsible for the moral decay in America, as evidenced by the increase in murder, rape, and robbery rates since the 1950s? Silly? Frivolous? Sure--but Hollywood has deep pockets, even if the ACLU doesn't. It's about like suing McDonald's because some people lack the self-control to not Super Size every meal. I think the ACLU would get pretty upset having to spend money fighting these suits. A Senseless Mass Murder in Chicago Why can't the police keep guns out of the hands of criminals like Salvador Tapia, a man with a long criminal history? Because the police are part of the problem. From the Chicago Sun-Times: Tapia used a Walther PP handgun to massacre three ex-bosses and three former co-workers Wednesday in an apparent rage over being fired about six months ago.It makes you wonder, doesn't it, why there's a problem getting criminals to obey gun control laws, when even police officers don't obey them. Signs of a Recovering Economy Bond interest rates--especially short-term bonds--are coming back up. At the close of business today--too late for me to purchase any--Schwab showed Fannie Mae notes due 11/15/2003 available for purchase with an annualized yield to maturity of 1.718%--a good bit better than a money market fund, and Fannie Mae is just one step below a Treasury bond for safety. What's interesting is how many relatively high yielding, short-term bonds there are: General Motors Acceptance Corp. bonds due 11/10/2003, with an annualized yield of 1.351%, and a few other investment grade corporate bonds maturing in less than a year, with acceptable yields: Capital One bonds due 7/30/2004 with an annualized yield of 1.925%. These are still disappointing yields compared to three years ago, but compared to what we have seen the last few months, they are pretty decent--far better than money market funds, with little risk. That such bonds are available tells me that the smart money expects yields to rise enough in the next few months that they don't mind keeping their money in lower yielding instruments for a while. Very Compelling Article About Ideological Blinding and Car Safety Instapundit recommended this article about airbags, ideological blinding, and car safety to his Administrative Law class. I recommend it also. Malcolm Gladwell's article shows how the well-intentioned efforts of Haddon, Nader, and Claybrook to impose airbags on automobiles achieved a very minor improvement in traffic safety--while this same crowd put almost no effort into promoting the use of seatbelts, using either persuasion or mandatory seatbelt laws. Unlike Instapundit, who admits to being a big fan of airbags when this was a hot topic a dozen years ago, I was never a supporter of airbags, and I objected to making them mandatory on both libertarian and practical grounds. If people wanted to be stupid, and dind't want to wear seatbelts, or didn't want to pay for airbags in their cars, that was their choice. I wasn't keen on being forced to pay for their stupidity, but by the same reasoning, you could prohibit promiscuous sex (straight or gay), excessive eating of red meat, and smoking. If liberals were going to use "health care costs" as an excuse for this sort of intrusion into the free market, they better bloody well be consistent, and regulate a lot of other things that were near and dear to the liberal agenda. I was also hostile to airbags on practical grounds. Seatbelts work very well at reducing injuries and deaths, and I have always been a big fan of seatbelts. When I was in 12th grade, I carpooled to UCLA in the afternoon with several other nerds in training to take classes. (This was a big and special thing in 1973--it's actually pretty common today.) The 1964 Chevolet Malibu (but mine was light blue) I drove didn't have seatbelts in the rear seat, and with a bit of encouragement, my father came up with the money to buy aftermarket seatbelts, and we installed them ourselves.) When I first met the woman who is now my wife, she was not in the seatbelt habit, partly because her Fiat 850 (don't laugh) had such miserable seatbelts. I was a nuisance on the subject, however, and she started to wear seatbelts whenever we went anywhere. A few weeks before we married in 1980, she was driving for her job as a delivery person. She hit a parked VW Beetle on the Santa Monica Freeway, and converted a full-sized Ford station wagon into a compact. Fortunately, she was wearing a seatbelt, and while she had a nasty bruise across her chest from the shoulder strap, she walked away from the accident. Without a seatbelt? I would probably still be single. (There aren't many women like Rhonda, and I suspect that I would just have gone through life, desperately alone, the archetypal computer geek.) Seatbelts work, and they work very well. Airbags are for people too stupid to wear seatbelts. I wasn't happy about mandatory seatbelt laws (which do work, at least to the extent that they are enforced), but at least sealtbelts are highly effective at reducing injuries and deaths. According to Gladwell's article, airbags with seatbelts provide a small marginal advantage over seatbelts alone, and airbags alone are distinctly inferior to seatbelts alone. A friend of mine in California was a paramedic (before he started his own company and became rich, as almost everyone in California who isn't perpetually wasted seems to do at some point in time), and his perception, based on the accidents to which he had responded, was that the airbags provided some advantages over seatbelts alone, but airbags alone weren't all that useful. I can remember when the great mandatory airbag controversy was being fought out in the court of public opinion. The mass media were overwhelmingly (as usual) on the wrong side--that airbags and other passive restraint systems should be mandatory, because there was no way to get the masses to wear seatbelts. At the time, I was partial to something like allowing insurance companies to refuse pain and suffering or medical payments to anyone who wasn't belted up in a traffic accident. People with my point of view were routinely castigated as idiots or worse, stooges of the car companies, by the left. It now turns out that from the standpoint of public safety, the preferred leftist solution was pragmatically wrong. UPDATE: I've received a surprising volume of email on this subject. One person points out that sodium azide, the propellant commonly used in airbags, is quite toxic. I recall when airbags were made mandatory that one of the junk yard trade associations expressed its concerns, claiming that sodium azide is carcinogenic, and was therefore threatening the health of their workers. This report says otherwise. Reality Strikes in the Entertainment Industry An AP news story reports: LOS ANGELES (AP) - Universal Music Group, whose roster of artists includes 50 Cent, U2, Elton John and Diana Krall, will cut the price of its wholesale CDs and push for a $12.98 retail cap on its discs in an attempt to woo music fans back into record stores.The vast majority of CDs that I buy aren't that expensive, since I am usually buying classical music, and much of what passes for "music" these days I would pay not to have in the house, but I am gratified to see that some entertainment companies have finally figured out that part of what drove piracy was absurd pricing. Absurd pricing doesn't make piracy right, but when was the last time that you heard of someone photocopying a whole book, rather than buying it? Books are cheap enough that the only time you ever see anyone photocopy a book is because the book is out of print, or otherwise unavailable. The convenience of having a bound book means that it's not worth the effort. Copying music CDs is easier than copying a book, but the blank CD still costs 30 cents or so, and it takes a few minutes to make a copy (and most teenagers definitely have more money than time). Getting the cost down to $8-$10 will probably wipe out some fraction of teenaged pirates. If there are any commercial pirates out there, the profit margin will shrink enough to make the risk of copyright law violation irrational. I keep waiting for Microsoft to either: 1. Cut prices on their software; or, 2. Make their software work reliably enough to justify their outrageous prices. The Patriot Act I am beginning to suspect that most of the screeching about the Patriot Act is either cynical partisan politics, or some very misinformed people. You can read the text of it here. Please: opponents of the Patriot Act, educate me on this. The only part of this law that seems either radical or potentially dangerous is section 236A, which provides for indefinite detention of aliens "if the release of the alien will threaten the national security of the United States or the safety of the community or any person." Even then, it appears that aliens can only be arrested if they can't legally be admitted--although I will admit that I can't find the sections to which section 236A refers. Wednesday, September 03, 2003
Amusing Microsoft Word 2000 Spelling Suggestion As you probably know, if Microsoft Word doesn't recognize a word in its dictionary, it will make a suggestion of the word that you probably meant. Sometimes, the results are quite entertaining. At least in some versions of Word, "childcare" was not recognized; Word would suggest "kidnapper." (Close enough.) Some years ago, I was writing a book in which I mentioned Rep. Charles Schumer (now Sen. Schumer). His name not being recognized as a word, Word showed rare wisdom in suggesting "Schemer"? Today's amusement is that I have returned to a project that I started some years ago, and never finished: the autobiography of woman who grew up in Texas during the Depression. She has lived a long, sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic, but often interesting life. In discussing a particular pet who had reached the end of the road, she used the word "euthanize." Word didn't recognize that word, but did suggest, among other interesting possibilities: "euphemize." I have met a few pets that were definitely in need of being euphemized! It's Not Polygamy, It's "Plural Marriage" From the Deseret Morning News, a Utah paper: COLORADO CITY, Ariz. — Utah Attorney General Mark Shurtleff called it an "oversight" when he failed to invite members of Utah's largest polygamist communities to his recent "Polygamy Summit" in St. George.Well, isn't that special? "Plural marriage" sounds so much less accusatory than "polygamy." UPDATE: Several readers have informed me that the term "plural marriage" has been in use in Mormon circles for a long time to describe polygamy, and this is not an innovation. It still sounds like an attempt to change a word with negative connotations "polygamy" to one that doesn't sound so threatening, much as the neutral and clinical "homosexual" has been replaced by "gay." Died And Gone to Heaven My students at Boise State are polite, surprisingly well-informed, laugh at the appropriate moments, and generally come to class well prepared to discuss the assigned readings. "Toto, I don't think we're in California anymore." "Paul Hill's Body Lies a Moldering in the Grave" Somehow, that lyric doesn't have quite same as ring as it does with "John Brown's Body" as the subject. It's hard for me to feel any sympathy for Hill. If Paul Hill had destroyed abortion clinics, I could at least respect his fervent desire to stop what he considers to be murder. Property is always of lesser significance than lives. Killing an abortion doctor, except while that doctor is actually headed into the operating room to perform an abortion, doesn't qualify as justifiable homicide by any stretch of the imagination. It's not lawful to gun down a serial killer as he walks down the street, unless they resist arrest, or are engaged in an immediate act that threatens the life of another. Neither of these cases really fits what Paul Hill did. Paul Hill clearly sees himself as the 21st century equivalent of John Brown, and I think that's a fair comparison--and that should tell you something of how I feel about John Brown--a man who was too willing to kill, and sometimes to kill innocents, in the single-minded pursuit of justice. All the time and money that Hill and friends have spent on this trial could have been spent in ways that wouldn't have taken a life or inflamed pro-choice sorts: civil disobedience, blocking abortion clinic entrances; leafletting and picketing. Even criminal actions such as property-only sabotage can be remedied with enough money. To quote Clint Eastwood in Unforgiven: "It's a hellava' thing when you kill a man. You take away everything he's got ..... And everything he's ever gonna have." Any liberal who regards Paul Hill as a monster, but John Brown as a hero, is only upset that Hill objects to abortion. Anyone who lionizes John Brown clearly has no problem with Paul Hill's methods. Labels: abortion What Does The Patriot Act Do? I've been reading some pretty breathless stories about the Patriot Act and the shocking and dangerous powers that it supposedly grants to the government--and I haven't been able to figure out what to make of these stories. Many come from the ACLU--a low credibility organization, especially on civil liberties, an area that they seemed to have abandoned for the more interesting issues of abortion and homosexuality the last few years. Law professors whom I respect keep raising evidence that much of this screeching about the Patriot Act is incorrect--that many of the questionable or even criminal actions that have been a source of newspaper stories were not done under the authority of the Patriot Act at all, relying on powers that the federal government has used for many years against organized crime. There might well be a strong case that these extensions of government power ten and twenty years ago were questionable, but if a certain practice is lawful against the Mafia, why should al-Qaeda be granted more rights? In any case, these practices couldn't be laid at the feet of John Ashcroft, nor could they be blamed on the Patriot Act--this starts to smack of partisan politics. I was therefore pleased to see this detailed response from the Justice Department to strong accusations made by the Cato Institute concerning the Patriot Act. The Sacramento Tales I spent most of a round trip cross-country plane flight reading Chaucer's Canterbury Tales; perhaps that's why this item tickles my fancy. Hey, Isn't That a Matter of Choice? There's a group that encourages long-term contraception--even pays women (and some men) to go on Norplant or be sterilized. Yet some leftists are quite upset about what they are doing. Why? Because instead of encouraging middle class, college educated sorts to stop having children, this organization is encouraging drug addicts and alcoholics to stop littering. (Isn't "littering" what you call it when someone has kids in numbers--and with as much care--as a dog?) I actually would understand if this were coercive. During discussion of the prudential theory of constitutional interpretation, one of my students said, "But think of all the good that can be accomplished if the courts look at the results of their decisions!" My response was to point to Buck v. Bell (1927), where Justice Holmes justified mandatory sterilization on what was clearly a prudential basis: "Three generations of imbeciles are enough." But "choice" is the great organizing principle of the universe to the left, at least with respect to sexual behavior and reproduction. There's no coercion here. What's their problem? How Do My Readers Feel About Advertising on Blogs? Perhaps I am deluding myself if I think that anyone is actually going to pay to advertise on my blog, but what would be the reaction if I were selliing advertising space (not pop-ups)? Would my blog lose its charm? Or would you regard it as just another way to pay me for the effort I put into this rant and rave session? I will tell you that I really, really enjoy my little soapbox here, and if I could sell enough advertising space to do this full time, it would be very, very tempting. Tuesday, September 02, 2003
Homosexuality and Child Molestation Professor Volokh is asking for data that shows whether homosexuals are disproportionately child molesters or not. The most bluntly pro-homosexual textbook I found asserted, "Actually, most child molesting is done by heterosexual men to little girls; 80 percent of child molesting is in that category, and only 20 percent is homosexual (McCaghy, 1971)." [Janet Shibley Hyde, Understanding Human Sexuality, 4th ed., (New York, McGraw-Hill Co.: 1990), 422.] It seems rather odd that Hyde's book, published in 1990, neglects to cite any of the more recent works on the subject, most of which indicate more homosexual molestation. Even at 20%, that would mean that homosexuals are 4x-6x overrepresented among child molesters. First of all, it's important to recognize that until the late 1970s, child molestation was regarded as a rare, bizarre, and unusual phenomenon--how shockingly common it was just wasn't recognized. Even today, many people are startled to find out how large the percentages are of children who are sexually abused. The data that I have is somewhat dated--but then again, before Political Correctness had taken over the field. How many victims of childhood sexual abuse are there? A variety of surveys have been conducted, using a variety of methodologies, none of which can be considered perfect. Many of the studies before 1990 were conducted among college students, and so tend to leave out those victims of child sexual abuse who fail to reach college because of their problems. [Christopher Bagley and Kathleen King, Child Sexual Abuse: The Search for Healing, (New York, Tavistock/Routledge: 1990), 69-70.] The range of the 11 studies summarized in Bagley & King are 12%-40% of females, and 3%-8.6% of males.[Bagley and King, 76] Faller quotes the same studies, though in less detail. [Kathleen Coulborn Faller, Child Sexual Abuse: An Interdisciplinary Manual for Diagnosis, Case Management, and Treatment, (New York, Columbia University Press: 1988), 150] The Everstines use the figures 15%-45% of females and 3%-9% of males, but "believe that the currently accepted percentages for males who have been molested will be revised to 10% or 15% of the population when more accurate data are forthcoming." [Diana Sullivan Everstine and Louis Everstine, Sexual Trauma in Children and Adolescents: Dynamics and Treatment, (New York, Brunner/Mazel Publishers: 1989), 2] These studies were conducted in Britain, Canada, and the United States, with Bagley and King asserting that child sexual abuse survey reports in California are unusually high, though it is unclear whether this is a methodological problem, or reflects higher incidence in California. [Bagley & King, 69] Another problem is that we really don't know how accurate our sampling methodology is. Boys who are molested may be less willing to report it than girls because there is a homosexuality shame associated with their victimization. There may also be more repression of memories among boys for this same reason. We also have a problem in that counting victims will give different numbers than counting molesters. Fixated pedophiles have much higher numbers of victims than molesters who molest within family or household structures. While "fixated pedophiles," the homosexuals who pursue primarily little boys, are, by most studies, a minority of offenders, they cause a disproportionate percentage of victims, because they usually have more victims per offender: Fixated offenders are characterized by persistent interest and compulsive behavior, with offences often preplanned. Male (same sex) victims are the prime targets (Groth, Hobson, and Gray 1982). Treatment of these offenders is difficult as they are fixated at an earlier development stage, and have limited experience of successful sociosexual peer relationships. [Bagley & King, 184.]Faller similarly describes the fixated pedophile's characteristics and cause: The perpetrator may have liaisons with or even marry adults of the opposite sex, but those sexual relationships will be exceptions to the perpetrator's general sexual pattern and sexual preference.Here's the important point, from the standpoint of the Boy Scouts, day care centers, school teachers, and others who supervise children who may not be able to readily protect themselves: Pedophiles often obtain positions where they have ready access to their victims. Thus, they may be scout masters, camp counselors, day care center providers, teachers, or big brothers (O'Carroll 1980). Some of these men appear to be quite well functioning in areas other than sexual, while others will have a number of areas of dysfunction. [Faller, 85-86.]It has been an article of faith for the homosexual community and the popular media that a child molester isn't "a homosexual," even when the adult and his victims are both male. One AP wire service story I read, after a chilling account of a self-identified homosexual with AIDS who had raped and attempted to infect a number of children, quoted local mental health counselors that, "The vast majority of sexual predators are heterosexuals." [David Foster, "HIV-infected molest suspect outrages town", Santa Rosa (Cal.) Press-Democrat, November 29, 1992, A1.] This wonderfully reassuring idea (at least reassuring to homosexuals) seems not to have taken hold with any of the books on child sexual abuse that I examined. Quite the opposite. In describing a study done in Calgary: Abuse of both males and females was overwhelmingly at the hands of males, so the abuse of boys was usually homosexual in nature.In describing the nature of the abuse received by children, Faller uses the word homosexual in a completely expected way: The encounters with female victims were usually heterosexual (94%), whereas for males they were usually homosexual (84%). [Faller, 18.]The Everstines, as well as Faller and Bagley & King, draw a distinction between those molesters who go after females (who are usually related to the molester, or the molester is a part of the household), and those who go primarily after males (who are usually not part of the household). In describing the molester who goes primarily after boys: The molester is a man who, by default, tends to rely on women for support and nurturance. He has always found, in the adult women who guided him through the shoals of childhood, a source of solace. As a result, he has become dependent upon female authority figures, even though he resents this trait in himself. At an unconscious level, he feels a strong identification with women, but he would never be able to confront or admit this introjected persona.A third problem is that especially because homosexuality has become a political football in the last few years, molesters who regard themselves as homosexual in their adult relationships may be reluctant to identify themselves in that manner once the criminal justice system becomes involved. What I do find interesting is how much of the scholarly work on child sexual abuse, back before it became a Political Correctness problem, recognized some connections between child sexual abuse and homosexuality, as either cause or consequence. It looks as though sexual abuse of boys acts for some as a kind of recruitment process into adult homosexuality: it is the conflicts surrounding the homosexual role rather than the childhood abuse per se which diminishes self-esteem and self-concept. [Bagley & King, 122]Haugaard and Reppucci summarize several studies that showed a strong correlation between child sexual abuse and adult homosexuality. While seeing a possible theory to explain why girls might develop a homosexual orientation in order to avoid repeating sex with another male, they admit that they cannot see an explanation for why males so abused would seek out other males for adult sexual partners. [Jeffrey J. Haugaard and N. Dickon Reppucci, The Sexual Abuse of Children, (San Francisco, Jossey-Bass Publishers: 1989), 67] Yet other experts, in describing characteristic adult problems of childhood sexual abuse victims, pointed to a research study that showed a fundamental difference between male and female victims that might well explain the apparent problem with this theoretical model: [M]ale victims tend to be more aggressive or externalizing of their distress, while females tend to be more internalizing and self-destructive. [Bagley & King, 119; also see Everstine & Everstine, 387.]All sources that I checked drew interesting connections between child sexual abuse and the sort of behaviors that are stereotypically part of homosexuality. Not surprisingly, a child's sexuality frequently becomes severely distorted by the experience of molestation, with several different sources agreeing that, "Children so traumatized may cope by becoming promiscuous or developing an aversion to sex. Each type of reaction represents a failure to develop normal sexual relationships." [Bagley & King, 115, 119; Faller, 147-148.] Haugaard and Reppucci summarized several different studies that had found "heightened sexual activity by victims, both as children and later as adults," and molested children acting "in sexually provocative ways toward older males." [Haugaard and Reppucci, 66.] Can you say "chickenhawk"? This promiscuity "frequently represents a lack of inhibition against and sometimes a compulsion toward sexual behavior of all sorts, including sexual abuse." [Faller, 209.] The Everstines similarly observed: We have observed that some persons (men as well as women) who are promiscuous or who appear to be unable to "attach" by establishing trusting love relationships may have been victimized as children. These people may easily involve themselves in sexual encounters with strangers, but have tremendous difficulty in forming and maintaining healthy partnerships. They may enter therapy with the complaint that they feel adrift and alienated from life. Many appear socially adept but in fact lead solitary lives, devoid of close ties or commitments. [Everstine & Everstine, 153-154.]While many homosexuals may not fit this model, it does describe, especially for male homosexuals, a widely recognized phenomenon--the lack of interest in long-term monogamous relationships. (It is also beginning to describe a large group of heterosexuals that have grown up as well in the last 20 years of marital chaos.) Bagley & King describe one traumatic effect of childhood sexual abuse as a sense of powerlessness[Bagley & King, 115-116] — which certainly describes the continual whining from homosexual activists about being an oppressed minority in a heterosexist world. Several sources mention self-mutilation as a response of childhood sexual abuse victims. [Bagley & King, 117, Faller, 152, 306. Haugaard & Reppucci, 68.] As a female victim of childhood sexual abuse who had taken to burning herself with cigarettes and pulling out her hair told my wife, "It's a different kind of pain. It takes your mind off the other things that hurt." The phenomenon of "piercings," which started out in the homosexual community, and has since spread into the straight community, seems like an obvious connection. Alcoholism and other forms of substance abuse are repeatedly mentioned by most sources as a method of deadening the pain of childhood sexual abuse. [Bagley & King, 117, Faller, 103, 152, 306-307, Everstine & Everstine, 153.] It has long been known that homosexuals (male and female) abuse alcohol, cigarettes, and other recreational drugs at higher levels than the general population. [EMT Associates, Inc., Gay Men, Lesbians, and Their Alcohol and Other Drug Use: A Review of the Literature, (San Francisco, San Francisco Dept. of Public Health: 1991), 1-17.] What has long been disputed, however, is why. A number of theories have been advanced, but no one engaged in research on this topic appears to have considered that the reason is because of child sexual abuse. [EMT Associates, Inc., Gay Men, Lesbians, and Their Alcohol and Other Drug Use: A Review of the Literature, 22-36.] The high rate of suicide among homosexual teenagers has long been claimed as "evidence" that the "heterosexism" of our society is destructive. But a characteristic of childhood sexual abuse victims is abnormally high levels of suicide attempts and successes. [Bagley & King, 121, 123, 141-142, Faller, 152, 306-307, Everstine & Everstine, 13, 153. Haugaard and Reppucci, 68-69.] Perhaps homosexuality isn't the reason for the suicides, but that both are symptoms of the same underlying pain? As should be obvious from the list of symptoms described above, there are some astonishing parallels between the characteristics of childhood sexual abuse victims, and homosexuals. Perhaps the most interesting of all is Faller's description of the characteristics of child molesters: A fourth and related pattern to look for in evaluation is unusual or bizarre sexual practices. Sometimes these are encounters in which the perpetrator is very regressed. Other times they are patterns of sexual deviation such as transvestitism, sadistic or masochistic activities, coprophilia and coprophagia, zoophilia, fetishism, or certain kinds of homosexual encounters. [Faller, 212.]As most people who live too close to San Francisco are well aware, this is also a list of the sexual deviations that are displayed or alluded to in San Francisco's annual parade. There is, of course, one more point: homosexual activists (who I concede are probably not typical of homosexuals) can't seem to make up their mind whether NAMBLA is part of their movement or not. That's probably the most damning piece of evidence of all. I suspect that some of the activists know full well that unless someone is out molesting little boys, their movement is going to peter out in another couple of generations. Labels: child sexual abuse Pancho Villa HBO is running a movie about how Pancho Villa let a newsreel crew tag along behind him as he fought the Mexican Revolution: "And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself." If you are at all curious to know how the Los Angeles Times covered Pancho Villa's campaign, click here. The Los Angeles Times in those days was a conservative Republican newspaper--and what I found really startled me. Marriage: It Doesn't Mean The Same Thing To Everyone Well, Canada went ahead and legalized gay marriage--but this article from the New York Times is a reminder that especially for gay men, "marriage" means something a bit different than it does to straight people--not just as implemented, but even as theory: When David Andrew, a 41-year-old federal government employee, heard that the highest Ontario court had extended marriage rights to same-sex couples two months ago, he broke into a sweat.This appears partly on the first page of the article, and partly on the second page: The magazine Fab published a guide to Toronto's new gay marriage scene, with tips on bridal harnesses and blue leather garters, bachelor party strippers and where to find counterculture bouquets of green roses and black magic flowers. Helping the Poor There is a policy of our government that depresses wages for the poorest Americans--disproportionately racial minorities. This policy also discourages technological innovation, and costs taxpayers of states like California billions of dollars a year. This policy enjoys the the tacit support of big corporations and small sweatshop owners. Yet liberals overwhelmingly support this policy--and call opposition to this policy racism. Rich Lowry over at National Review Online has a strong article about the effects on unlimited (almost entirely illegal) immigration on wages. This is a subject upon which I have long been of two minds. Yes, I agree that Mexico (and a few other countries) are sending us their hardest working people--disproportionately, young men who are willing to work long hours under often brutal working conditions. Because so many of them are here for a few months at a stretch, sending money back home, this tends to operate as a highly efficient foreign aid program--with no opportunity for money to stick to the fingers of bureaucrats in our government, or theirs. But there are some definite downsides to the vast swarm of illegal immigrants that are here. 1. There is that wages question, of course. For low-skilled American citizens and legal residents (you know, the fools who actually bother to submit all the right paperwork to immigrate), competing with additional workers means lower wages, and probably higher unemployment. (Who would you hire? A worker who might complain about illegal or potentially unsafe working conditions, or someone at whom you only have to yell "La Migra!" to get them to leave the building?) 2. There is the technological innovation question as well. The United States was the leader in mechanical invention in the 19th century because we were desperately short on labor. Devices like the cotton gin, the McCormack reaper, and the sewing machine, were all devices that multiplied the work of unskilled laborers. Not surprisingly, in Europe, where cheap labor was readily available, these labor saving devices were slow to be adopted. America is still a major player in the business of technological innovation--but cheap labor clearing tables and picking food discourages invention in these fields. Reducing immigration--espcially among the desperately poor--has the potential to jump start invention in these areas. 3. Yes, these illegal immigrants are definitely among the hardest working of other countries, but they are also disproportionately single young men. What do single young men, engaged in hard labor for hours on end, do at the end of the day? If you've lived near a military base, you know what they do: they get drunk, they get into fights, they look for prostitutes. There's an enormous amount of social disorder that comes from this, and it's not new, nor is it specific to the countries from which these immigrants come. David Courtwright's Violent Land: Single Men and Social Disorder from the Frontier to the Inner City explores this subject in considerable detail. While anti-immigrant feeling in previous centuries certainly had a strong racist component, at least some of the perceived "problems" of immigrant populations was real: single young men, a long ways from home, behaving badly. Genetics, Environment, and Intelligence David Bernstein points to this Washington Post article about a new study on genetics, environment, and intelligence. For those who haven't been following this matter: once upon a time, educated people believed that smart people had smart kids--and they believed that this was true so often that it justified hereditary titles. Americans didn't quite buy that, but it was obvious to most people that smart people had smart kids, and dumb people had dumb kids, and this was true often enough that it didn't surprise anyone. Over the course of the nineteenth century, a distinctly racial tone developed to this idea. Slave holders needed to come up with a plausible reason to hold slaves, and to keep free blacks oppressed; Americans in general needed a justification for Manifest Destiny as we beat the Mexicans and drove back the Indians. Then Social Darwinism came along. This theory built on Darwin & Wallace's theory of survival of the fittest to justify that the distribution of wealth in places like Britain and America was not just oppression of the poor by the rich, but reflected the intellectual superiority of the wealthy. However: even Social Darwinists like Sir Cyril Burt acknowledged that in Britain, about 40% of the population was in the wrong class, based on intelligence tests. (That is to say, there were a lot of stupid rich people, and a lot of smart poor people.) Social Darwinism went out of fashion for two reasons: 1. One extreme form of it--the Holocaust--was a little horrifying to ignore. To be fair to the Social Darwinists, they asserted that the poor were stupid, and should be discouraged from breeding. Hitler asserted that Jews were too clever and cunning to be allowed to breed. A cynic might suggest that Hitler was actually using a reverse Social Darwinist argument--that he represented the inferior classes, trying to use politics to achieve what they could not achieve by education and hard work. 2. Blacks in America did poorly on IQ tests. Liberals therefore decided that IQ tests were culturally biased. This claim was never very persuasive, because Asian immigrants should have been even more culturally out of touch than American blacks, and yet did very well on IQ tests--and much of the discrepancy between American whites and blacks was on mathematical reasoning, not a particularly cultural component. But the left controlled education, and so it didn't matter that their argument didn't make much sense. Anyone who disagreed was a racist. A few years back, Murray and Herrnstein published The Bell Curve--a really impressive piece of work. They made extensive use of longitudinal studies of a large sample. To remove the effects of racism on employment and educational attainment, they removed Hispanics and blacks before running most of their studies, and demonstrated that there is a strong correlation between intelligence and a number of important social behaviors. Smart people go to college more than stupid people; get better jobs; get divorced less; spend less time on welfare, and less time in jail. None of this should be any great surprise. Murray and Herrnstein did something quite courageous. They addressed the question of race and intelligence, because to ignore this question was to ignore the elephant in your swimming pool. They said that the data demonstrated a clear correlation between race and intelligence. They were careful to point out that it was not clear how much of this was genetics, because race and poverty are so closely tied in America. They also pointed out, however, that even if the racial difference in intelligence was strictly environmental, it was not at all clear that this problem could be resolved without spending a quantity of money that simply wasn't available. They pointed out that the only Head Start programs that had provided clear gains for underprivileged kids were programs nothing like current Head Start programs--and so expensive that it was simply impossible to perform on a national scale. Even if the money were available, there weren't enough skilled people to take on the huge number of underprivileged kids. For this, Murray was denigrated as a racist. (Herrnstein had the good sense to die before the book came out.) What the screeching liberals seem to have missed was that portion of the book where Murray and Herrnstein castigated the development of a society where stupid people simply have no real purpose. Murray and Herrnstein pointed out that our society has increasingly become a place where only smart people can navigate through the paperwork and bureaucracy required to start a business. The sort of pushcart and neighborhood businesses that provided income and dignity to previous generations of poorly educated and not terribly bright people are increasingly difficult to start today. Murray and Herrnstein emphasized the need for a society where every honest person prepared to work had an opportunity to do so, instead of the society that smart, college-educated sorts have created. All of this is leading up to a discussion of the Washington Post article. The claim is that intelligence is largely determined by genetics among the middle and upper classes. Specifically, the heritability of IQ at the low end of the wealth spectrum was just 0.10 on a scale of zero to one, while it was 0.72 for families of high socioeconomic status. Conversely, the importance of environmental influences on IQ was four times stronger in the poorest families than in the higher status families.Some years back, liberals would denigrate as racism any claim that IQ heritability was 0.65 (meaning that most of the determinant of intelligence was genetic). I don't find this claim about the differing influence of environment on intelligence ridiculous; kids growing up in a screwed up situation are going to be facing some significant obstacles. Can we improve the environment of poor kids enough to let them break through? I think Murray and Herrnstein's concern remains legitimate: can we afford the money and people to meaningfully change the poor environment of millions of kids? Think about the kid growing up in a crack house, with intoxicated mothers, and violence in the schools. These are extreme examples--but the sort of problems that are not easily solved, and which describe some significant fraction of the underprivileged kids that need to be helped. Before we commit the money, let's see some evidence on how much money and how many people Head Start will need to make a statistically significant difference in the intelligence of the kids it tries to help. One thing we can do immediately, however, is solve the lead paint problem. Lead exposure creates a significant risk of mental retardation; that's part of why the Reagan Administration speeded up the removal of lead from gasoline. There was a study from Australia that clearly demonstrated the risk. Poor people, especially east of the Rockies, are more likely to live in houses with lead paint in them. Even something as low-tech and low-cost as having the government pay to repaint existing lead-paint homes every couple of years would be a worthwhile effort. It's not as effective as sanding down to bare walls while guys in hazmat suits vacuum up ev |
