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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 ran for Idaho state senate in 2008--didn't win I've written a number of history books, as well as scholarly and popular articles, (see my web page). Relocating to Boise? Use my realtor, neighbor, and friend, Cindy Smith csmith@1realtyone.com.
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Saturday, December 13, 2003
Michael Crichton on the New Religion Les Jones' blog excerpts from a Michael Crichton speech about how suppressing religion doesn't make it go away--it just pops up in other forms: I studied anthropology in college, and one of the things I learned was that certain human social structures always reappear. They can't be eliminated from society. One of those structures is religion. Today it is said we live in a secular society in which many people---the best people, the most enlightened people---do not believe in any religion. But I think that you cannot eliminate religion from the psyche of mankind. If you suppress it in one form, it merely re-emerges in another form. You can not believe in God, but you still have to believe in something that gives meaning to your life, and shapes your sense of the world. Such a belief is religious.Let me recommend Nien Cheng's Life and Death in Shanghai, her memoir of the Cultural Revolution. She points out that the Red Guards, in spite of their supposed atheism, used Chinese words for religion to describe the Great Helsman, Mao. (Yes, those words are capped for a reason.) Communism in the Soviet variant, and the National Socialist form of Germany, suffered this same problem: the urge to worship is overpowering. Timothy Treadwell, Bear Food I mentioned this believer in the gentleness of grizzly bears who was killed and eaten by one a while back. This blog says that he was apparently a consultant to Disney on their new movie Brother Bear. Irony overload! Friday, December 12, 2003
A Simple Plan This is one of those movies that I did not see when it came out in the theaters, nor did I rent it. It was obviously going to be a violent movie about immoral people, soaked in more gruesome detail than I really need to see. I could just visit Los Angeles if I wanted to soak myself in that. I worked on my couch potato skills this evening, it having been a very tiring week, and A Simple Plan came on one of the cable channels. Okay, let's see if it's any good or not. Even the cable channels tend to edit out of the worst of the gore. You know? It actually lived up to the description on the cable guide: "a gripping thriller." Anyone that saw the previews knows the essential plot: three guys wandering through the snow find a huge quantity of cash. What do you do with it? Call the police, or take it home? I'll tell you, I sometimes fantasize about what I might do if, wandering around the desert, I found a 1940s airplane crashed in an brushy overgrown ravine. I wander down, and find that it contains a large shipment of cash, headed for a World War II military base. (Of course, a large shipment of cash back then would be less than some people I know spend on their sailboats. What, me, bitter? No.) There is a problem with this scenario (one that A Simple Plan does not address): what can you do with it? You can't deposit in a bank--that will trigger questions from DEA or IRS. You can't spend it too freely--people will talk--and other people will start to ask questions. You can't buy a big chunk of land, or a big house with it--title companies tend to get nervous if you show up with a big wad of cash, and offer that instead of a mortgage or a wire transfer. The best that you can do is buy some of the less absurd toys, use it for groceries, meals out, and put all of your "legitimate" income into savings. Hmmm. Oh yes, back from that tangent. What really surprised about A Simple Plan is what a profoundly moral film it is. I won't reveal the plot, but it is amazing how quickly the person who at first thinks that keeping the money would be wrong finds that blackmail and murder are perfectly acceptable ways to keep the money. There is an "ashes in the mouth" plot twist that I was not expecting. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World My wife and I went to see this movie last weekend--it has been a busy week. We enjoyed it immensely. If you are looking for a shoot 'em up action film, you may be a little disappointed. It is a story of two very different personalities: a Royal Navy captain and his friend, the ship's surgeon. There are two significant battles in this film--three, if you include the Horn and its storms--but those who need their movies full of swashbuckling may not going to be terribly engaged by it. My areas of specialization are American history, black history, and 20th century totalitarianism. I freely admit that I don't have any great knowledge of Napoleonic navies, so all I can say is it seems very realistic! One point that did strike me as a nice touch, and upon which I do have some knowledge, however, is the spyglasses that we look through during the film. I am not spoiling any plot elements of the film when I tell you that someone put some effort into showing optically poor spyglasses--of the sort that you might expect to find in naval use during this time. There's a Web Site For Everything Do you need to create a presentation quality graphic Venn diagram? Visit venndiagrams.com! Amazing! Time To Make Polite Request of Governor Taft of Ohio A less than perfect concealed weapon permit law is now sitting on Governor Taft's desk. Everyone seems to have some criticism of it (and with some good reasons), but it is better than nothing (which is what the Buckeyes have now). Taft has repeatedly threatened to veto it, so it's time to put some pressure on him. It has provisions for reciprocity with other states, so even if you live outside Ohio, let Governor Taft know that you are more likely to visit a state where you can lawfully defend yourself from a criminal attack. Here's a copy of HB 12, the bill on Taft's desk. From this convenient web page you can either send an email directly, or: Governor Taft values your views and opinions, and his staff monitors these messages. Responses are sent via U.S. mail. You will not receive a response via e-mail.Here's the letter I just sent him: Please sign HB 12, the concealed weapon licensing bill. I teach Constitutional History at Boise State University, here in Idaho. One of my specialties is the history of American weapons regulation. My most recent book, Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic: Dueling, Southern Violence, and Moral Reform (Praeger Press, 1999) examined the history of how concealed weapons came to be regulated, and why. The history of why these laws came about suggest that a licensing law of the sort that HB 12 will implement will not be a hazard to public safety. The Movie Industry Aims High It's always nice to know that the movie industry has such refined tastes, and looks down its nose at repulsive opportunities to make money: A German cannibal is holding talks with several film companies on a movie deal about his grisly story, his lawyer said on Friday at his murder trial. Professor Volokh & I Are Talking Past Each Other If you read this, you'll know that Professor Volokh and I have been engaged in a civil debate about the nature of establishment of religious jurisprudence. It has been a useful discussion, some of it here in public, and some in private email, and has helped me to clarify exactly what I am trying to say. One of the difficulties is that there are actually several separate establishment clause issues involved here. 1. May the government discriminate against or in favor of a particular religion? In American Jewish Congress v. Beverly Hills (9th Cir. 1996), the decision points out that those seeking to enjoy the same opportunity as Chabad to set up a religious symbol in a public park in Beverly Hills were denied permits. That's a clear violation, under any perspective. That doesn't reflect anti-Christian sentiment by the courts, but it did reflect that sentiment by Beverly Hills. 2. May the government completely prohibit any expression of religious belief in a public place? That's the ACLU's position in Allegheny--that no religion is allowed to have its symbols present. This is completely contrary to the historical evidence for what the establishment clause was supposed to mean. The Court didn't agree with the ACLU, but their method of handling this should have been to say that as long all religions have an equal right to have their symbols present, that's good enough--no need to prohibit them. Instead, in Allegheny the Court took the position that if the symbols are cultural (as well as religious), they are okay--and then kicked out the creche. If they did that because it was overtly religious, they should have kicked out the menorah as well, and arguably the Christmas tree. If they kicked out the creche because there were no other religious symbols nearby (as a careful reading the decision might suggest), that doesn't appear to have been because no one else wanted their symbols there. For the most part, communities aren't putting up menorahs, and this is probably why most applications of either the ACLU doctrine, or the Allegheny decision's subterfuge form of it, end up to the detriment of Christians. We get the full weight of either ACLU or ACLU-lite. 3. May states impose religious tests or oaths as a condition of holding office? It seems quite clear to me that while this leads to dishonesty, that such oaths or tests were common in 1789 shows that they were not considered horrifying or shocking. The U.S. Constitution prohibits religious tests to hold office, but the First Amendment's ratification did not change or expand this to the states. Only incorporation through the Fourteenth Amendment could expand the 1789 or 1868 understanding of the establishment clause could do this--and there is no evidence that I have seen that either understanding would have conflicted with such state requirements for religious tests or oaths for officeholders. I can understand why these requirements are offensive to those who share different religious beliefs (or the lack thereof), but that doesn't make them unconstitutional. UPDATE: Eric Rasmussen makes somewhat similar arguments to mine, here. Thursday, December 11, 2003
Spammers Under Arrest! From WTOP radio: STERLING, Va. - Two North Carolina men were the first people charged under Virginia's anti-spam law, authorities said Thursday.For some reason, "Rip the shirt! How cliche!" just popped out of my memory of an early Cheech & Chong album. (But I don't think the Virginia law allows the use of whips for this.) Let's see, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress couldn't prohibit virtual child pornography. What do you think the chances are that they decide that spamming is a protected form of free speech? Wednesday, December 10, 2003
The Supreme Court's Decision on Campaign Finance I don't quarrel with much of the decision. There seems no question that the government has considerable authority to regulate campaign contributions. What upsets me about the decision is their inconsistency about free speech. I thought I would have to come up with my own criticism, but Justice Scalia's dissent (in part) captures the hypocrisy of this all well: This is a sad day for the freedom of speech. Who could have imagined that the same Court which, within the past four years, has sternly disapproved of restrictions upon such inconsequential forms of expression as virtual child pornography, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, 535 U. S. 234 (2002), tobacco advertising, Lorillard Tobacco Co. v. Reilly, 533 U. S. 525 (2001), dissemination of illegally intercepted communications, Bartnicki v. Vopper, 532 U. S. 514 (2001), and sexually explicit cable programming, United States v. Playboy Entertainment Group, Inc., 529 U. S. 803 (2000), would smile with favor upon a law that cuts to the heart of what the First Amendment is meant to protect: the right to criticize the government. For that is what the most offensive provisions of this legislation are all about.This is absurd. I don't buy the argument that some social conservatives have advanced that freedom of speech and the press were just about political speech, but it is certainly true that this was the core of the Framers' concerns about government oppression. To find that virtual child pornography laws are unconstitutional--while using a balancing test that allows Congress to suppress independent political criticism of government officials--is to turn the First Amendment's protections upside down. A consistent application of these protections, as offensive as it sometimes is (virtual child pornography, for example), would at least have the advantage of consistency, although it would be light-years from the notion of freedom of the press intended by the Framers. But this montrosity? It puts the least socially justified forms of speech (virtual child pornography and flag-burning) at a higher status than political speech of a form that the Framers would have immediately recognized. As for the results of this absurdity: We are governed by Congress, and this legislation prohibits the criticism of Members of Congress by those entities most capable of giving such criticism loud voice: national political parties and corporations, both of the commercial and the not-for-profit sort. It forbids pre-election criticism of incumbents by corporations, even not-for-profit corporations, by use of their general funds; and forbids national-party use of "soft" money to fund "issue ads" that incumbents find so offensive.Of course, the big winners are television and radio--where gun control organizations need not spend even one penny to get their message across, while gun rights groups are largely shut out of the pollitical process. Does anyone really think it would have been wise to ask this Court to decide the meaning of the Second Amendment? I suspect this bunch could have turned it into a "right" to have all guns confiscated. Apologizing To My Class I mentioned a few days ago my frustration with the quality of writing of the papers in my Constitutional History class. One of the students was a little upset about this (I guess more of my students have found this blog than I realized), and I suspect that he was not alone. Let me emphasize that I wasn't necessarily blaming the students for poor writing. As I pointed out, some of the papers were pretty good. I suppose that I should mention that even some of the papers that had significant writing problems showed considerable effort in the research phase. In that blog entry, I praised the students for engagement, good intentions, and interest in the subject. As I think should be clear if you re-read it, I directed my criticism primarily at the educational system that seems to have failed a number of them. In any case, in the future I will keep my mouth shut until the semester is finished. College is hard enough without feeling personally attacked. Tuesday, December 09, 2003
This Is Progress From the December 9, 2003, Providence [Rhode Island] Journal: PROVIDENCE -- The state Supreme Court yesterday took up the question of what it means to "keep and bear arms" in Rhode Island.If you are upset that I call this "progress," then you must not live in California! To have the Rhode Island Attorney-General acknowledge that there is a right under the Rhode Island Constitution to have a gun in your home or business--while arguing that there is no right to a concealed weapon permit--is far more than would ever happen in California, or New York, or Massachusetts. Gun-rights advocates argue that Rhode Islanders do have a right to "bear arms" even if they're not on their property. That right can be regulated through carry permits, they say, but not without hearings and other due-process steps that they claim were missing in this case.I am pleased to report that some of my work was cited in briefs submitted in this case. The Effects of Michigan Non-Discretionary Concealed Weapon Permit Law An article from the December 7, 2003 Flint Journal: Genesee County - Some people who checked out clean for a concealed weapon gun permit are committing crimes, sometimes with the guns they were licensed to carry.You can find a more permanent copy of the full article here. No surprise, really. This has been the experience of dozens of other states that have adopted similar laws. It is nice to see sensible opponents of these laws do what they have done in many other states: admit that their worst fears were wrong, and these laws don't cause Wild West shootouts. Bowling For Columbine: Required Viewing A friend of mine just returned from Germany. At least at the school that a friend's daughter attends near Munich, the entire class was taken to see the film. The DVD is on prominent display. How unfortunate. Click here for one list of falsehoods in the film. Religious Tests For Holding Public Office Instapundit notes Will Baude's question as to how the Tennessee Constitution's prohibition on duelists and atheists holding office can be upheld. The dueling provision, while now out of date, was an extrajudicial attempt at suppressing what was correctly perceived as a very serious problem--the majority who served on juries wouldn't convict people for dueling. Such provisions were quite common as either constitutional provisions or statute law in the early 19th century. My book Concealed Weapon Laws of the Early Republic: Dueling, Southern Violence, and Moral Reform examines the motivations for these laws in great detail. Concerning the religious provisions: the U.S. Supreme Court (wrongly, in my opinion) struck down Maryland's somewhat similar requirement in Torcaso v. Watkins (1961). I say wrongly because the First Amendment was never intended by the First Congress to apply to the states, most of which had provisions requiring officeholders to either believe in God or specifically to be Christians. (See here for a bunch of examples of how the Framers felt about religion.) The First Amendment was a limitation on the federal government alone. The Fourteenth Amendment incorporates the First Amendment against the states, but there is simply no evidence that I have seen that the authors of the Fourteenth Amendment intended the First Amendment's prohibition on establishments of religion to include the broad hostility to Christianity that has become the norm in First Amendment jurisprudence from 1947 onward. UPDATE: Professor Volokh thinks I am a bit over the top on the "hostility to Christianity" remark. Let's see: a nativity scene or other overtly Christian symbol on public property will get a lawsuit in nothing flat--and the courts will take the position of removing it. The City of Beverly Hills used to have a variety of symbols visible over the streets in the holiday season, including a menorah. The ACLU a few years ago tried to argue that a menorah is not a religious symbol, but a cultural symbol. However, that was as part of their effort to get anything Christian removed from the public lands. I don't recall ever reading about lawsuits to get Jewish or other minority religious group symbols removed from public spaces. Perhaps Christians are more tolerant of minority religions than the other way around? UPDATE: That last sentence was, I thought, obviously enough ironic. I guess not, from reading Professor Volokh's response. I didn't bother to attack the Tennessee Constitution's provision because I thought it obvious that it no longer makes sense today. What it mostly does it make liars of many officeholders. But just becomes something no longer makes sense doesn't mean that it is unconstitutional. UPDATE 2: Professor Volokh points to ALLEGHENY COUNTY v. GREATER PITTSBURGH ACLU, 492 U.S. 573 (1989), which upheld both a Christmas tree and a menorah as not a violation of the establishment clause, but a creche (nativity display) was a violation: The Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that each display violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment because each has the impermissible effect of endorsing religion. 842 F.2d 655 (1988). We agree that the creche display has that unconstitutional effect but reverse the Court of Appeals' judgment regarding the menorah display.Does anyone besides me find this to be a pretty bizarre form of hairsplitting? As descendants of Europeans, the religous symbols of Christmas are also cultural symbols as well. To say that a menorah is a cultural symbol, and thus permitted, but a nativity is a religious symbol, and not permitted, is silly. The decision goes on to point out that: Precisely because of the religious diversity that is our national heritage, the Founders added to the Constitution a Bill of Rights, the very first words of which declare: "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or [492 U.S. 573, 590] prohibiting the free exercise thereof . . . ." Perhaps in the early days of the Republic these words were understood to protect only the diversity within Christianity, but today they are recognized as guaranteeing religious liberty and equality to "the infidel, the atheist, or the adherent of a non-Christian faith such as Islam or Judaism." Wallace v. Jaffree, 472 U.S., at 52 . 39Ah, that living Constitution again! It changes and moves to reflect the political beliefs of those on the Court. A Slow Learner Is Better Than A Non-Learner Instapundit points to this remark by Sour Bob: Did I mention I've almost entirely stopped drinking? It's true. I have an occasional bourbon and water these days, but rarely more than one, and most days I only drink club soda.It just horrifies me how much alcohol dominates this culture. Sure, many people drink a beer now and then, or enjoy wine with dinner, and don't become alcoholics--but there's a sizeable minority that either turn into alcoholics rapidly, or drift into that condition if they are depressed or under stress. You often have no warning or indication that you are going to get into that state. I never developed a taste for beer when I was young--the smell of it used to make me nauseous. Wine? I would rather drink grape juice. Gin & tonic? Okay, but just okay. There have been times in my life that I suspect, had I been in the habit of drinking, I could easily have developed a drinking problem. Trouble never seems to have trouble finding me; why should I go look for it? Monday, December 08, 2003
Finishing Up the Semester At Boise State University: That's Why There's Not Much Here I do appreciate those who have been dropping money into the tip jar, however. I have just finished grading the term papers from my Constitutional History class. It has not been a pleasant experience. Some of the papers were pretty good; others leave me wondering which of the following happened: 1. Was the student in too much of a hurry to bother re-reading the paper after it came off the printer? 2. Should some secondary institutions remove that word "school" from their signs, for fear of being brought up on fraud charges? On average, these papers showed an inferior command of written English compared to the essays written by my wife's 7th and 8th graders in California. (Admittedly, she taught at a private school, and it was a school so reactionary and narrow-minded that they still taught grammar.) I still need to write a final, inflict that on the students, grade it, and submit final grades. It has been interesting to teach this bunch of students. They are very polite, often quite interested in the subject, and seem like a well-intentioned bunch. For many of these students, however, I want to line up their middle school and high school teachers, and ask, "What happened? Weren't you supposed to be teaching them to write competent sentences, paragraphs, and essays?" About Schmidt There are movies that I have felt wasted my time. There are movies so bad that I have walked out on them (the version of The Shining with Jack Nicholson in it), and others that I should have (A Boy and His Dog). There are films where I found myself wondering, "Why did I waste this much time watching this film? I need to take a shower to get the moral decay out of my brain." Interview with the Vampire is one example. There are movies that were much worse than that, where I felt like my soul needed to be cleaned with steel wool and bleach afterwards. Two examples: Lina Wertmuller's Swept Away and Seven Beauties. By comparison, the worst hardcore pornography I saw in my misspent youth was positively uplifiting, and much less degrading to women. There are movies that were so powerful that I was positively unable to relate to other people for a day or two afterwards, such as Looking For Mr. Goodbar. About Schmidt, however, sets a new standard for me: It is the first movie that I have seen where I would pay $500 to have my memory of it erased. It is a very well-made movie about a man confronting old age, with a splendid cast. No, it wasn't Cathy Bates slipping into a hot tub naked that caused the trauma. It was the profoundly existential nature of the film, seeing it as I have reached that awful stage where I am not only no longer young, but I have come to realize how much of my life has been lost, and I can't get it back--and it seems like the best years are behind me. Perhaps it was the wedding near the end, where the two songs are the same ones that my wife and I sang at our wedding in 1980 (probably the last time the screenwriter attended a Christian wedding). Maybe if you are young and in good health, About Schmidt won't bug you like it bugged me. My daughter's boyfriend and roommates watched it, and they all ended up crying. I still wake up in the middle of the night, two weeks later, and I think about it, and it makes me even more depressed. Seeing Phobos and Deimos I saw this ad on astromart.com for an 8" refractor objective, including this amazing (but not unbelievable) claim: during recent Mars opposition I twice viewed Phobos and Deimos with it.Note: Phobos and Deimos are tiny--a few miles across--and not terribly bright objects. Sunday, December 07, 2003
Here, Kitty, Kitty From the Los Angeles Times, of all places, an article about the new hazard to humans living in the West: mountain lions. For six months before the conference, Sanders had been working with tracker and biologist Jim Halfpenny, studying cougars on the outskirts of the environmentally progressive town of Boulder, Colo. He was hardly a cougar expert yet, but Sanders did know enough to realize that Boulder's lions were not behaving in the manner that they should. The scientific literature suggested that cougars were elusive, timid, frightened of humans and their dwellings, yet Boulder's cougars wandered through backyards in broad daylight and jumped onto roofs, seemingly unfazed by the presence of people.The rest of the article is very interesting--and part of why I always carry a pistol when walking in the foothills. Of course, I don't live in California, for which I am very grateful. Interesting Story About Los Angeles Police Department Why do vice squads spend so much time trying to arrest prostitutes and johns? There are probably a lot of reasons, but at least one of the legitimate reasons is that once prostitutes become common in an area, women who are not prostitutes often find it difficult to walk without being accosted by guys trying to secure some short-term rental companionship. I know that at one time in Hollywood, this was a big problem because prostitutes would insist on customers exposing certain body parts to demonstrate that they weren't cops. Some customers decided to accelerate the process by driving up to a woman and demonstrating that he wasn't a cop. This, of course, didn't go over well with proper young ladies in the 1970s. (Today, of course, the response might be derisive laughter.) But I know that some departments take a somewhat more pro-active role in this; we call it entrapment. A reader reports his experiences with Los Angeles Police Department's pro-active approach to vice enforcement: When I lived in South Central Los Angeles at Figueroa and 106th, Figueroa was the "streetwalkers' capital of the world" (at least 2 or 3 streetwalkers can be found on each block of Figueroa from downtown L.A. all the way to the Harbor). Big Corporation Hires Thugs To Terrorize Innocent People But it's the New York Times. Don't hold your breath waiting for them to cover this story. Ann Coulter, Once Again Off the Deep End, But With a Good Point The rest of the column is typical Ann Coulter, often quite funny, and a bit unfair. But she makes one good point here: Everyone knew the decision in Roe v. Wade was a joke. The decision hinged on the convenient notion of "privacy," which, oddly enough, still fails to protect my right to manufacture methamphetamine, saw off shotgun barrels or euthanize the elderly, privately or otherwise.The same crowd that screeches about the right to privacy to justify striking down state laws against homosexuality insists that the government has not just a right, but an obligation to know what guns you own, how many you have, and what their serial numbers are. Their excuse? Public safety. In the age of AIDS, you could make the same excuse to discourage anal sex by passing laws. It would be about as accurate, and about as fair. More Putting the Cart Before the Horse Once again, gay people are hot to engage in censorship: Here's the important part of this, however: "Young gay and lesbian persons growing up in America . . . have a high rate of depression," he said. "To start in elementary school hearing this unwritten message that it's not OK to be gay, well, that's really upsetting."The excuse used to be that this was because homosexuals were discriminated against, and subject to all this nasty social pressure to be straight. It's been at least ten years since it was not okay to be gay; as near as I can tell, there must be only a few communities left in America were being gay would be a problem. Where I lived in Sonoma County, a friend of my daughter was a bit swishy by 6th grade, and of course, teachers were falling all over him, encouraging him to embrace his homosexuality. (That he might have just been a bit effeminate was, I think, lost in their enthusiasm for being so courageous!) He came from the "classic," now discredited Freudian explanation for homosexuality home: strong, domineering mother, weak, emotionally distant father. I'll keep saying this: the San Francisco Department of Public Health's survey of homosexuals in 1991 found that 30% of male homosexuals and 48% of lesbians reported having been sexually abused as children. A number of the surveys had painful, volunteered remarks to the effect that they had only recently recovered these memories of the abuse--a not uncommon problem among sexual abuse victims, who repress their memories for many years. Labels: child sexual abuse |
