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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, February 07, 2004
Photon Instruments Refractor: Continued Progress I attempted to change the air spacing on the objective by reducing it from 2mm (the included aluminum spacer ring) to 1.5mm (the rim of a Philadelphia Cream Cheese container). This clearly made the images less crisp, so I just reassembled everything again--and now I seem to have real diffraction rings on both sides of focus. They aren't identical (that would indicate perfectly corrected optics--at least, neutral, neither overcorrected nor undercorrected), but they are at least something like plausible diffraction rings. Perhaps the reassembly of the objective again put everything back in proper position, the way it was before being jostled around in transit from Arizona to here. When I first went outside with the tube, the image of Saturn was actually pretty crisp, but as the glass cooled, everything degraded. By the time I was ready to go outside again, the sky was clouded over again. But I am at least beginning to get some confidence that this refractor will be a useable scope. I have been told that Photon Instruments may not have responded to my email because of the MyDoom virus--they apparently were so overwhelmed with garbage from this that they had to throw away vast quantities of email in their inbox. I am going to make another try at contacting them. Labels: telescopes Friday, February 06, 2004
Pope Calls For Fairness In judging priests accused of sexual abuse. Well, okay, yeah, I guess that is appropriate. I would be a bit more impressed if the Church had done a little better job of being concerned about the monstrous crimes being committed against kids and teenagers, and showed a bit more contrition for having ignored the problem as long as they have. This isn't a trivial case, nor is the Catholic Church being unfairly pursued on this. The article reports that "more than 325 of the United States' 46,000 clergy have either resigned or been barred from church work." That's a little under 1% of the priesthood who have been caught, and where the evidence was strong enough to lead to resignation or the Church excluding them. What do you suppose the rate would be of priests who got away with it? Perhaps 2x or 3x as high? This is a pretty shocking percentage--far too high to say, "Well, the Church recruits from the general population, so you have to expect that." I used to have great respect for this Pope. Statements like this, however, make me wonder how much in touch he is with human nature: He called for the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith and other Vatican councils to work better together in instructing seminarians "to adopt the necessary measures to assure that priests live in conformity to their call and to their commitment to perfect and perpetual chastity for the Kingdom of God."The chastity requirement is not Biblical. For roughly half the time that there has been a Roman Catholic Church, priests were not required to be celibate; this is a medieval innovation, and whatever the merits of the argument for it were in 1100, they do not seem all that sensible now. However, I do not agree with those who say that celibacy is the core problem of these sexually abusive priests. If this were the case, we should expect that the victims would be overwhelmingly females. (Assuming that priests are overwhelmingly heterosexual.) Yet from all that I have read, the victims are overwhelmingly males. Why is that? I fear that for a lot of young Catholics who are struggling with homosexuality, the priesthood may seem like a way to avoid confronting their sexual preferences. What is causing those sexual preferences? Hmmm. Here we are again with an institution in which sexual abuse of minors is common; and the institution seems to have a fair number of priests who sexually abuse minors. Do you suppose that there might be a pattern here, that one causes the other? We know that one particular category of child molester--the fixated pedophile--tends to be aware of their sexual preferences pretty early on--often by the time they finish college--and that they tend to go into vocations or avocations that give them access to children (and from what I have read, disproportionately boys). At least one book on the subject suggests that the pedophilic preference develops because the victim is molested in a fairly narrow window of sexual development--a point where the mixture of pleasure and humiliation causes them to repeat the pattern. I wonder if part of why this pattern has become so common is that the Catholic Church failed to intervene early enough to stop people like Father Geoghan and Father Shanley (one of the founders of the North American Man-Boy Love Association) from abusing children. Not every victim will become a molester, but it does make you wonder what happened to Father Geoghan and Father Shanley as choir boys, doesn't it? That some of these priests have told their victims that homosexual sex with a priest is a "sacrament," just enrages me. It also makes me wonder if that was the excuse used to excuse these crimes against them, three or four decades ago. UPDATE: At least one reader thinks that I am being unfair in making assumptions about priests that Father Geoghan and Father Shanley might have had, a long time ago. As I said, "makes me wonder." It is entirely possible that this pattern of behavior that Geoghan and Shanley (and many other priests) have engaged is not the result of priestly abuse. As I said, "makes me wonder." He also asks "if priests were being convicted at higher rates than rabbis, ministers, or imams." An interesting question. Does anyone have any data? The report indicating almost 1% of serving Catholic clergy have either resigned or been removed because of molestation is a pretty astonishing rate--far higher than I would expect from an average population. It is certainly the case that media attention tends to be strongest on clergy involved in child molestation, perhaps because we tend to have higher expectations of the morality of the clergy. And yes, I go a little off the rails about child molestation. I have talked to a lot of victims over the years (although most were not victims of clergymen), and to say that it angers me a lot is an understatement. For those who don't understand my anger about this (and yes, I get email occasionally from people that don't understand what the big deal is about adults pursuing teenagers for sex), let me recommend you read I Never Told Anyone: Writings by Women Survivors of Child Sexual Abuse. It is one of those books that you read a few pages, put it down, cry for a while, and read a few more pages. I'm sure that there are books by men survivors of child sexual abuse out there, although I haven't read any of them. The conversations that I have had with such survivors have been painful enough. I get a little enraged when I see the damage done by child molesters, and I especially get enraged when I see someone using a position of authority--especially a position of moral authority--to justify such a crime. Over the years, I have seen more than a few news stories of Protestant pastors who have abused their authority in similar ways. I am not aware, however, of any denomination that has made a repeated pattern of transferring such monsters around, allowing them to continue their crimes. This is why I am so upset with the Catholic Church's power structure--not with Catholics, and not with Catholic priests (the vast majority of whom, obviously, are not molesters). UPDATE 2: Over here you can see someone criticizing what I had to say--and shows some evidence that public schools have a tendency to deal with molesting teachers in a similar way--and commonly enough that there is even an expression for it: "passing the trash." Admittedly, I don't expect much of public schools as an institution. I expect a bit higher standards from an institution that is headed by someone whose title is "Vicar of Christ." Labels: child sexual abuse Sick the Last Two Days Sorry for the lack of blogging. I'm fighting some sort of cold/sore throat curse. Thursday, February 05, 2004
Sure Beats The Superbowl Half-Time Show From a Norwegian newspaper: Norwegian black metal band Gorgoroth staged a special concert that made Janet Jackson's breast-baring look like nursery school antics and left Catholic Poland outraged. A police investigation has begun after a show that included dozens of sheep heads on stakes, a literal blood bath and a naked, crucified woman, newspaper VG reports. Mel Gibson's Film I received this note from a reader: I was at lunch today with a Jewish friend and the subject of the film came up. My friend mentioned that some of his Orthodox and Hasidic relatives (all practicing rabbis) had been to see it and they actually liked it. Apparently the only complaints they had were that the Aramaic subtitles were slightly off. The Uniqueness of the Holocaust Meryl Yourish still won't apologize for implying that I am anti-Semite, because I had the unmitigated gall to point out that the Holocaust was, unfortunately, not unique. There are way too many other examples of twentieth century genocides that differed in the details, but not in the core component: mass extermination of people who had done nothing wrong. One particular reason that I now hold Meryl Yourish in contempt is this statement: Holocaust denial also includes the minimization of the Holocaust, or denying its uniqueness.What? How can you be engaged in denial of the Holocaust when you say that it happened, it murdered millions of people and, unfortunately, it wasn't unique? Yourish is also upset with Sasha Volokh for arguing that six million murders of individuals is morally indistinguishable from six million murders committed for the purpose of genocide. I have a gut reaction that trying to wipe out an entire ethnic or cultural group is actually more monstrous, but I must confess that when you start to talk about six million murders, for whatever reason, does it really matter? This is a great evil, and fortunately, we don't have to make a choice. No one is holding a gun to my head and asking me to decide if I would rather see six million people murdered because of their ethnicity, or see six million people murdered because they were members of the wrong political party. It is all evil. Yourish also says: As for my saying half the world was complicit in the Holocaust, that's called "hyperbole." I tend to hit that note sometimes in my posts. But at least I admit it.I think Yourish needs to work on her understanding of hyperbole. To qualify as hyperbole, it has to be clearly and obviously over the top--and so much so that it is recognized as hyperbole. Had Yourish said that half of Europe was complicit, she would not have been far off. However, there were Europeans who risked life and limb to prevent the Holocaust; my German teacher in junior high created fake IDs in the occupied Netherlands. It helped that the German military governor supplied her Dutch Resistance group with blank ID cards. The father of a co-worker worked in the Dutch bureaucracy responsible for social security records; he smuggled out records, because they listed each Dutchman's religion. David Bernstein (who, unlike Meryl Yourish, can read and reason) is sticking to the notion that the Holocaust was unique, and points to another blogger who identifies some specific reasons why the Holocaust is unique: But the Holocaust? It's different. The Nazi goal wasn't to take territory from Jews. It wasn't to take resources from Jews. It wasn't to destroy armed opposition to the German government. There was no underlying reason for it; the goal was to wipe out Jews. Worse, it was such an important goal for the Nazis that even while fighting a continental war for their regime's survival, resources were diverted away from the war effort to continue the Holocaust.Except there's one other excellent example, and one that Hitler himself dismissed: "Who today remembers the Armenians?" The Turks killed somewhere between 200,000 and 1.5 million Armenians during World War I, just to kill them off, because of their ethnicity, and during a war in which the Turks were fighting for their survival as a nation. Finally, here is the big issue for me: does it matter if the Holocaust was unique or not? Murder is evil; mass murder is mass evil. As much as it bugs liberals to hear this (judging from their whining about our intervention in Iraq), it is immoral to stand back while mass murder takes place. It seems that a lot of people want to have the Holocaust kept in its own little special box, separate and more important from all the similar horrors that have taken place over the last century. I don't buy that. Once you get into the mass extermination of the innocents, I don't see that it much matters whether the reason is ethnicity, race, religion, political affiliation, or no reason at all. This is evil, and instead of accusing me of being a Holocaust denier for saying that it happened, and it was not all that unique, Meryl Yourish might be better off directing her vitriol at people that actually do deny it happened. UPDATE: A very interesting story about the Holocaust that reminds us that Jews weren't the only ethnic group that the Nazis were anxious to wipe completely off the face of the Earth: Let me recount a story that I heard at a family reunion in 1997. My mother-in-law's cousin served in the Army in WWII with the 3rd Ranger Battalion. Military historians will recognize this unit as one of the ill-fated Ranger Battalions that were virtually destroyed in January 1944 during the Anzio landings in Italy. The units were surrounded by a German counterattack, and most members were either captured or killed. Very few escaped. The Photon Instruments 127mm Refractor I received some very helpful suggestions over in the sci.astro.amateur newsgroup--including some from Roland Christen, one of the world's most acclaimed telescope makers (he owns Astro-Physics), and in the Equipment Talk forum at astromart. One suggestion was to adjust the tightness of the front retaining ring that holds the front lens of the objective. This seems to have made a real difference. Too loose, and it appears that the undercorrection problem gets worse; too tight, and it puts pressure on the glass, causing other interesting problems. With a little fiddling, I at least have the telescope producing a so-so image. Saturn at 190x shows more detail than the Televue Ranger. I did not have ideal viewing conditions tonight, but I was able to see Cassini's Division pretty much all the way around the planet, and there was more detail visible in the planet's atmosphere. It was still slightly fuzzy, but that may be the chromatic aberration problem (no easy fix for that), or it might have been the moisture in the atmosphere. I still don't have even close to equivalent diffraction rings inside and outside focus, but outside focus there is at least something that looks like it could turn into diffraction rings when it grows up. Another suggestion, from Roland Christen, was to change the airspacing between the two elements of the objective. There is a 2mm spacer ring in there now; I need to find some 1mm and 1.5mm spacers to try instead, and see if this corrects the problem. A third suggestion, and probably the easiest to try, is to mask the objective down to 100mm, and see if the quality improves. If so, the objective has a turned edge (not too dissimilar from the same problem with parabolic reflecting mirrors in telescopes). My attempts at getting any assistance, advice, or even trying to purchase a better objective from Photon Instruments has yielded nothing. My email to them has not been answered. I can't imagine buying anything else from them. UPDATE: I have been told that Photon Instruments may not have responded to my email because of the MyDoom virus--they apparently were so overwhelmed with garbage from this that they had to throw away vast quantities of email in their inbox. I am going to make another try at contacting them. Labels: telescopes Wednesday, February 04, 2004
Feral Dog Packs & High Capacity Magazines Here's an interesting item from the Los Angeles Times about feral and wild dog packs: Steve Jenkins was jogging on the outskirts of Palm Springs on New Year's Day in 2002 when he was surrounded by a gang of 20 dogs. The hounds tore chunks of flesh from his arms and legs, pulling him down each time he tried to stagger to his feet.Now, in other parts of America, they have these sort of problems, but not being in California, they are allowed to defend themselves. This story appeared in one of the Tampa Bay, Florida papers February 1, 2003, on the tbo.com site (it's not there now): TAMPA - Teresa Castellano knows that some folks saved her life. She just doesn't know who they are.Let's see, and the reason that we passed a ban on high capacity magazines was because there was no legitimate use for them? At the close of the 19th century, handguns were often advertised for dealing with dogs. I used to wonder if this was some sort of coy way of avoiding a more direct reference to self-defense, but in an age when dogs often ran loose, and rabies was more common than today, this makes a lot of sense. Having been bit badly by a dog once (and not even a very big dog at that), and feeling the air as another dog's teeth went through my pants leg, I find dogs a strong argument for carrying a pistol. Packs of feral or wild dogs are an argument for something with 13 to 15 round magazines. Paul Craig Roberts & Economic Freedom I used to have a very high opinion of Paul Craig Roberts. A few days back, Professor Volokh took Roberts to task for a fairly bizarre comparison of economic freedom in modern America, and the antebellum slave owning South. I have reserved any statement until now, but I am just astonished that Roberts would make some of the statements that he has made--they show a rather fundamental misunderstanding of the antebellum South and slavery. Feel free to see Roberts' response here, and then my criticisms. 1. In colonial and antebellum America, slaves could buy their freedom, but only with the acquiescence of their masters. All property held by a slave was legally owned by the master. At any time, a master could confiscate any money that a slave had saved up, and the slave had no legal recourse. No agreement that a master made with a slave was legally binding (although there were rare cases where this worked to the benefit of the slave). Slaves owned nothing except by the tolerance of the master. 2. Especially after 1822, most slave states prohibited masters from freeing their slaves without approval of the state legislature. The only way for a master to free a slave was to take him to another state, or sell him to another person (a subterfuge sometimes used to make a slave free without actually violating the law). The reasons were fear of masters dumping aged slaves onto the county poorhouse, and especially after Turner's Rebellion, the "bad example" that free blacks might provide to the slaves--that slavery was not a natural state for slaves. So much for economic liberty in the antebellum South! The state governments did not even believe in private property rights enough to allow a master to free his own property. 3. After 1740, many colonies prohibited teaching slaves to write; the slave states continued these laws, adding prohibitions on teaching slaves to read after Turner's Rebellion in 1831. These laws were clearly not always followed, but they are another reminder that the slave states did not believe in private property rights--they did not allow masters to educate their property. 4. Roberts made one of these statements that is very common in libertarian circles: Economically, mistreatment of slaves makes no sense. Capitalists normally do not destroy their own investments or poison their workforce against them. It would require an empirical study to determine whether more people have suffered at the hands of the IRS or at the hands of 19th century slave owners.Economically, Roberts is right--it would make no sense. No rational person would destroy a 2-3 year old used car today (th equivalent value of a prime field hand back then) out of anger or spite. But here's the difference: none of us spend much time worrying that our car is going to murder us during the night, or respond with violence when we abuse it one time too many. I am disappointed that Roberts seems unaware of Adam Smith's comments about slavery's inefficiency, because the only labor you get out of a slave, above and beyond his own subsistence, must be beaten out of him. There is no shortage of photographs showing the scars left by whipping slaves. Historians studying slavery have a for long time documented how inefficient slavery was; it would appear that masters held slaves at least as much for the sense of power and control as for the economic advantages. 5. Roberts makes another statement about slavery that is partly technically correct, but misleading and incomplete: Southerners did not enslave blacks. The institution pre-existed and came from Africa itself.This is as least an arguable point. Slavery was certainly common in Africa (as it was almost everywhere in the world), and blacks were brought to the New World as slaves--but at least in the first few years of Virginia, they were not considered slaves once they left the ship, but indentured servants. The institution of slavery developed gradually in the American colonies, not reaching its full form until fairly late in the 17th century. Southerners certainly did enslave blacks--those children born to slave women--and in some cases, to white women who had children by black men, free or slave--were enslaved. Slave owners did not buy those children as slaves; they enslaved children born free. Slaves were brought to the US South because there was fertile land and no labor force.Also wrong. There was a labor force here. The Indians weren't terribly interested in working as farm laborers, and even when enslaved, tended to disappear back into the forest. There were also many white laborers doing similar work in the early days of Virginia and Maryland. One of several theories that attempts to explain the rise of slavery as a racial institution argues that the Great Fire of 1666 in London so dramatically raised labor rates in England--even long distances from London--that it made it difficult for planters to attract white laborers to do the hard and often deadly work of tobacco planting in the malarial lands around Chesapeake Bay. Southerners were born into the institution just as were slaves. Slavery was an economic institution independent of racism. Its days were numbered, because it is not as efficient as free contracted labor and population growth was creating a labor market. I make no apology for slavery, not even for the kind the US has today.It is true that many historians believe that slavery was dying when our Constitution was written--and was revived by the invention of the cotton gin in response to the patent system the new Constitution provided for--but historians are still debating whether slavery was dying or growing in the 1850s. The real money to be made from slavery was not from the employment of slaves, but from the sale of them. This, plus the often destructive agricultural practices associated with cotton growing, suggests that slavery would only die if it had nowhere to expand. Slave owners were unsurprisingly heavily involved in efforts to expand the United States, including fomenting the Mexican War, and proposals to annex Cuba. Slavery in America could have been independent of racism. It wasn't. From the beginning of the 18th century onward, there was a presumption in the slave colonies that if you were black, you were a slave. The burden of proof was on the free black to prove that he was free. Loss of your manumission papers often meant being sold into slavery. I will make Roberts a deal: let him sign over his rights in order to experience being a field hand on a Louisiana sugar plantation, or an Alabama cotton plantation, for a week. During that time, we will sell his wife and children to another plantation 300 miles away, or perhaps we'll do another fairly common practice: direct his wife to have sex with the chief breeding slave, the one that the master thinks will produce better products for sale. (After all, being smart isn't a premium when breeding livestock, and masters were often no more considerate concerning slaves.) When Roberts protests, we'll give him 30 lashes, until the blood is pouring down his back. If he is still giving the master lip, we'll punch a hole through his tongue (although this will make him very fashionable on campus). Oh yes, let me mention, only one slave state made it a crime for a master to rape his slaves, and that was Mississippi. If the slave was under 12. And even that law didn't get passed until 1859. Roberts can then decide which he would prefer: that or the slavery of being in one of the higher marginal tax brackets (an experience that I have had, and that I did not enjoy). There might be some way for Roberts to make the point he is trying to make--that we are enslaved by the IRS. But perhaps having stumbled badly on this, he can compare our tax system to the Holocaust. If you want to know more, read my book Black Demographic Data, 1790-1860: A Sourcebook (Greenwood Press, 1997). UPDATE: A reader tells me that the 1859 Mississippi slave rape law only applied to blacks--that white masters were still free to rape their slaves. I am relying on an account in Deborah Gray White's Ar'n't I a Woman?. I have no reason to trust one account over the other. My goal here is to make sure that you are aware that there is some dispute about this--although neither version says anything good about the slave states: The case is George (a Slave) v. State, 37 Miss. 316 (1859). There is a note at the end of the case that states the legislature, in 1860, had changed the law to make rape or sexual assault by a "negro or mulatto on a female negro or mulatto, under twelve years of age" punishable by death or whipping. There appears to have already been a law on the books making it illegal to rape or assault a child under ten but regular statutary laws would not have applied to a slave child, even in the case of protecting her. A case cited within George, Minor v State, is very informative on this. I think Adrienne Davis has discussed this case in some of her legal scholarship. Meryl Yourish Needs to Take Some Classes in Reading From Meryl Yourish's blog: Sasha Volokh said he isn't "into" the moral uniqueness of the Holocaust. Clayton Cramer says neither is he, and it's probably emphasized over other atrocities because the Jews control the U.S. media.Of course, that's NOT what I wrote, as anyone who hits the link will see. Later, Meryl Yourish says: Polish Jews were massacred by the Poles while under German rule. Half the world was complicit in this, Clayton. That's why it remains emphasized. Not because Jews control the U.S. media. Because the world let it happen.Again, Meryl Yourish makes an inaccurate paraphrase of what I said. Her statement isn't even completely accurate. As I have mentioned in other contexts, the Nazis engaged in genocide with the assistance of collaborators all over Europe. Yes, Poles assisted the Nazis in murdering Polish Jews. But the Nazis did a lot of the killing themselves, everywhere they went. Half the world was complicit in this? No. Big chunks of Europe either did nothing, or actively assisted. But much of the world had nothing to do with the Holocaust. How many Africans were complicit? How many Chinese were complicit? How many South Americans? Meryl Yourish's statements are way over the top, inaccurate as to history, and she has engaged in a campaign of character assassination against me. Meryl Yourish obviously feels very strongly about the Holocaust. I would wonder a bit about anyone who did not feel strongly about it. But strong feelings are not a substitute for accurate paraphrasing and accurate portrayals of history. When it comes to anti-Semitism and similar forms of irrational hatred based on ethnicity, I am Meryl Yourish's ally. But why attack enemies, when you can attack friends? I did not have a strong opinion about Meryl Yourish before. I do now. It is not positive. More Testimonials About Mel Gibson's New Film From the Romanian Jewish actress who plays Mary in the film: The actress who plays Mary in Mel Gibson's passion-stirring biblical epic "The Passion of the Christ" says her parents were Holocaust survivors but she does not consider the film anti-Semitic. Outsourcing Misinformation Instapundit points to a report from the National Center for Policy Analysis quoting economist Bruce Bartlett that makes this claim about outsourcing: It's also important to know that when countries outsource work to India or China, they are only doing so for very low-end operations that require little skill or training. The high-end work and wages stay here--work that might not be retained if it could not be augmented by outsourced functions in low-cost countries like China and India.Nope. As many people have reported, lots of companies are outsourcing engineering jobs to India and China. Bartlett's claim is demonstrably false. You can argue whether outsourcing jobs is a good thing or not, and you can argue whether it is okay to outsource low paying jobs or not (do you really want Americans doing work this miserable?), but the claim that only low skill jobs are going overseas is just wrong. Immigration Some years back, I penned the aphorism, "Whatever other nations may say about us, immigration is the sincerest form of flattery." (Or at least, I thought it was original with me. I see Jack Paar is now credited with it as well.) I thought it was rather clever, since I assume that most people would recognize this as a parody of "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery." I still feel this way--it is hard not to feel some pride in America, that we represent such an attractive place to live that people will try to get here from Cuba by automobile: Two Cubans who tried to sail to Florida in a truck converted to a pontoon boat last year are making another attempt, this time piloting a seagoing 1950s-era Buick with nine other people, including five children, relatives said.I guess that they are ignorant, and just don't appreciate Castro's socialist paradise! That said, unlimited immigration is not entirely a wonderful thing. It wasn't a wonderful thing in the 1890s, and I'm sure that there are Native Americans who think it wasn't a wonderful idea in the 1690s. It is true that most immigrants coming to America are extraordinarily motivated to work and to get ahead, or they wouldn't be coming here. Hunger will motivate anyone, but hunger really isn't the issue. I don't hear about famines in Mexico, or China--two countries from whcih many illegal immigrants come. The motivation to come here for some is political or cultural. For most, it appears to be economic. Their native land has screwed things up so badly that these highly motivated, often very hard working immigrants do not see enough opportunity at home, and so they come to a place that, for all its flaws, still rewards hard work better than many nations. Some people focus on the problem of violent criminals among the illegals. No doubt, this is a serious problem. Most illegal immigrants are being attracted by opportunities here; I suspect that only a small fraction are fleeing criminal prosecution. Pretty clearly, the predators can't be a large fraction of the illegals, or America would be in even deeper trouble than it already is. The problem, however, is real, and the insistence by the left that requiring immigrants to go through proper procedures is racist just makes the crime problem all the worse. One aspect of this vast swarm of immigrants that is quite similar to a century ago is the effect on wages. I'm not thrilled about the H1B visas putting immigrants to work when there are still American engineers looking for jobs. Increasing the supply of engineers probably depresses my salary a bit, but big deal, I doubt that many American professionals who are working are actually suffering much because of this. Who is being hurt? It is the people who are competing with the vast majority of illegal immigrants. It is the guy who dropped out of high school, or didn't go to college, who is struggling to pay his rent, because the best that his unskilled labor can fetch is $6 an hour. It is the woman whose husband ran out on her, leaving her with two kids to support, and whose job pays her $6.35 an hour, with no health insurance. It is the college kid who can't find a summer job at all, or who works for a fast food place at minimum wage, because he can be replaced at a moment's notice with someone willing to work for minimum wage, provided the employer doesn't look too carefully at his driver's license. What would their wages be if they were not competing for jobs with an extra five million illegal immigrants? A century ago, employers took full advantage of this constantly arriving stream of immigrants, keeping wages low, and largely ignoring working conditions. (To be fair, many of the New York City sweat shop owners worked very long hours also, and sometimes were not that many steps up the economic ladder from their employees.) I would like to think that something motivates employers besides the almighty dollar, and I know that there are many employers who are genuinely concerned about their workers--but the more severe the competition, the more likely it is that the most successful business will be the one that is most merciless about cutting costs. Tthink of Wal-Mart--and remember the little scandal involving illegals working for Wal-Mart subcontractors. Remember Jefferson's famous observation: "Merchants have no country." At this point, some of you are saying, "But if wages go up, then prices will go up as well." Sure. If Jack-in-the-Box has to pay another $0.50 or $1.00 an hour to hire employees, I expect that either their profits will go down, or their prices will go up (depending on elasticity of demand for their product and how efficiently their competitors respond). For those of us in the middle and upper classes, paying another dime for a lunch isn't going to kill us--how much labor do you think goes into your burger, fries, and Coke. If paying another $1 or $2 an hour for farmworkers to harvest food means paying another $10-$20 a month for groceries, I can handle it. How long do you think it takes to harvest the food you eat? It might, however, be the difference between that kid frying burgers in the back finishing college or not. It might be what lets that single mother take her daughter to the doctor when she gets really sick--instead of going to the county hospital's emergency room because she doesn't have health insurance. It might be what lets the guy who fixes your car make enough to buy a house of his own, eventually. At this point you are probably wondering, "Isn't this an argument that the Democrats should be making?" If they cared about poor Americans more than they care about this fantasy of "multiculturalism," and the opportunity to get a bunch of illegal voting for them, yes, the Democrats would and should make this argument. And this is one reason that I am not a liberal. Liberals use the poor as their excuse for all sorts of laws, but here is a place where they could clearly distinguish themselves from corporate interests--and they won't. I am no fan of "living wage" laws, or minimum wage laws, because they are pulling on the wrong side of the supply and demand equation. Enforcing our existing laws against illegal immigration would, over a period of several years, increase wages for America's poorest workers: the people that are competing with illegal immigrants for the jobs that pay less than $10 an hour. There is another side effect of actually enforcing our laws: shortages of labor in American history have often produced technological innovation, better working conditions for workers--and prevented labor unions. (This last issue is perhaps why the Democrats are willing to sacrifice poor Americans on the altar of allowing illegal immigration). What provoked the burst of American ingenuity in the early 19th century? It wasn't just our patent system (although that played a big part). It was that labor was in chronically short supply in America. Americans needed sewing machines because seamstresses were expensive to hire. Americans led the world in interchangeable parts manufacturing because skilled gunsmiths were expensive to hire. Americans invented the mechanical reaper because, unlike Europe, you had to pay high wages to attract farmhands. An American woman invented the dishwasher because she wasn't happy with how her maids were cleaning the dishes--and it was expensive to hire good help. Think of all the tedious and miserable unskilled jobs that are largely filled by illegal immigrants today. Imagine a world where a shortage of those workers here drove up wages enough that employers could spend the money to buy machines to do these horrible jobs. Does that seem hard to imagine? As late as the beginning of the 20th century, many parts of Britain were still cutting wheat by hand--instead of with combines. Why invest the money in machinery? Labor was plentiful and cheap. This is not a strategy without risk. There is some danger that raising wages for unskilled labor by enforcing immigration laws will drive up the cost of goods and services to a point where foreign competition is more attractive. But does anyone really expect the relatively small increase in farmworker wages that would come from this would drive up lettuce costs here so much that it would make more sense to ship it in from Mexico, instead of California? Does anyone seriously think that Americans are going to send their cars to Mexico for repair? Obviously, driving to Mexico for a burger isn't likely. I think it is a strategy worth pursuing--but we would have to persuade Democrats to give priority to poor Americans, not illegal immigrants, and we would have to persuade Republicans to stop toadying to corporations that hire illegals. Lead in the DC Water Supply This news story from the Washington Post is a lot more important than just the personnel matter to which it refers: The D.C. Water and Sewer Authority fired a high-ranking manager last year who had repeatedly warned top agency officials and federal authorities of lead contamination in the city's tap water before tests last summer revealed that the lead exceeded federal limits in thousands of homes.Why does this matter so much? The article doesn't mention what some of the side effects of lead poisoning are. Lead poisoning causes increased aggression, and in children, lead poisoning causes mental retardation. It was because of a study in Australia of airborne lead and its effects on children that the Reagan Administration (hardly a bunch of environmentalists) accelerated the removal of lead from gasoline. Now, compared to the other causes of DC's severe problems with violence and lousy schools, I suspect that lead poisoning isn't the major factor. But unlike the other causes, which have significant cultural and political obstacles to fix, fixing the problem of lead in the water supply is just about spending money--no battles with teacher unions or multiculturalists. Coming Out of the Closet on Campus From the Washington Times: BOULDER, Colo. — A few years ago, Jeff O'Holleran said he began to realize that he was different from the other boys he knew. Massachusetts Supreme Court: Only Gay Marriage Will Meet The Requirement This news story reports that because there was some uncertainty as to whether "civil unions" would be sufficient to satisfy the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's equal protection requirement, the legislature asked for an opinion: The Massachusetts high court ruled Wednesday that only full, equal marriage rights for gay couples - rather than civil unions - would be constitutional, erasing any doubts that the nation's first same-sex marriages would take place in the state beginning in mid-May.I have never been keen on the "civil unions" approach, because it seemed like a fig leaf to cover this over, but I could at least see how it provided a one stop approach to give unmarried couples (perhaps even heterosexual unmarried couples) many of the contractural relationships that would otherwise be provided by marriage. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, however, has not even left that option open, forcing the legislature to either explicitly amend the state constitution to prohibit gay marriage, or give in completely. There is one other possibility: have the state completely remove itself from the marriage business. I am okay with that. UPDATE: I notice this poll conducted for Fox News back in November shows 66% of Americans oppose gay marriage, while only only 48% oppose "civil unions." But there's an interesting point made by the pollster: "It is interesting to note that a few years ago 'civil unions' were regarded as wildly controversial in states like Vermont," comments Opinion Dynamics President John Gorman (search). "Now the whole country is just about evenly divided on that notion, since they see it as an alternative to full marriage...."So perhaps a big fraction of the 41% in favor of "civil unions" aren't supporting it because they approve, but because they believe the only alternative is gay marriage. The Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court has made it clear that you can't have anything in the middle--gay marriage or nothing. What Is The Difference Between These Two Statements? 1. This statement from Jewish Book Mall's web page: "Rather amazing how many Jewish Nobel laureates there have been, in all the various fields. Alas, this is the Jewish Book Mall, not the Jewish Nobel Laureate Page, so we list here only the winners in Literature." 2. This statement, which I made a few days ago: "[The Holocaust] has received far more attention than similarly monstrous atrocities throughout history, perhaps because Jews in the U.S. have been in especially influential positions in the publishing and media business." The first statement is an expression of pride in the influence of Jews in the field of literature--and indeed, in many of the sciences. The second, to judge from the comments that many are making, is a sign of prejudice and anti-Semitism. Jews have been disproportionately influential throughout the history of Western civilization in the sciences and in literature--and Western civilization is richer for it. The movie industry in the United States, for much of the twentieth century, was disproportionately run by a relatively small number of Jewish immigrants and their sons. Michael Medved's Hollywood versus America makes the point that part of why Hollywood for so many years was not a hotbed of anti-American and anti-Christian sentiment is that these immigrants had a strong sense of being outsiders in America; they were careful not to offend the majority culture. In the process, they produced the films that we now think of as the golden age of film. I can't tell if this inability of some to recognize that statements #1 and #2 above are morally equivalent is willful, or just ignorance. It was not that many years ago that screaming "racism" at someone would immediately shut up the accused; the accusation was so powerful that no one but a genuine racist would continue to speak, because of feelings of guilt. This tactic has been rendered somewhat ineffective because of overuse--and often against people whose only "crime" was to argue that the laws should not discriminate based on race! There is a real danger that accusing someone of anti-Semitism without reason is in danger of having this same effect--making the charge meaningless through misuse. This is especially worrisome today because unlike say, 1980, when anti-Semitism was completely unacceptable outside of a few strange subcultures, real anti-Semitism is on the rise, especially among intellectuals. 38th State Defines Marriage As A Heterosexual Union Ohio passes Defense of Marriage Act: The law is known as "DOMA" the Defense of Marriage Act.I keep hearing liberals, libertarians, and even some conservatives (well, National Review sort of conservatives, who aren't terribly conservative) whine that an amendment to the U.S. Constitution limiting the authority of the judiciary to impose gay marriage simply couldn't pass--that there isn't enough support for it. Huh? Congress passed a Defense of Marriage Act a few years ago. There are 38 states (that's 3/4) that have passed DOMA at the state level. Yes, we would need 2/3 of each house of Congress to pass such an amendment, and it is possible that at least a few states that passed DOMA at the state level might be a little more reluctant to ratify a constitutional amendment. I do understand the concerns that some have about the current Federal Marriage Amendment, because it can be read as prohibiting the state legislatures from recognizing homosexual marriage. That's why I have referred above to "an amendment." I think the FMA can be clarified on this point. Tuesday, February 03, 2004
Thanks to My Loyal Readers I want to say thanks to all of you who have sent me notes of encouragement and those who have even kicked in small contributions through the PayPal button. I am especially pleased at how many of you share my concerns about the moral decline going on in America--and I'm not particularly a bluenose. For those of you who are joining this blog recently, and are perplexed or even angered by my apparent "homophobia," let me explain why I sound just a little over the top on the subject. I used to be a pretty doctrinaire libertarian on this subject. I didn't see homosexuality as a particularly big issue, one way or the other. I knew that the Bible taught that homosexuality was a sin, but there were lots of sins, and none of them were necessarily any worse from a moral standpoint than any others: divorce; adultery; hatred; greed; gluttony. It wasn't the government's job to impose a moral code unless there was pretty general agreement about that moral code. I also thought of homosexuals as being pretty much like other people, except for who they loved. My wife and I were often in disagreement about this, partly because my wife had a lot more friends (male and female) from high school that were homosexual, and was a bit less taken in by this piece of conventional wisdom. Moving to the Bay Area in the early 1980s didn't make any big changes to this. Yes, we got lost in the Castro District one Sunday and it was a little bizarre, but so what? I worked with a few gay people, and some of them were pretty bizarre, but again, the sample size was small, and I didn't make too much of it. What really set me off was seeing videotapes of the North American Man-Boy Love Association marching in the San Francisco Gay Pride Parade--and then finding out that at least among homosexual activists, the reaction was "so what?" I was told that NAMBLA was a perfectly fine organization. I was told by activists who did not approve of NAMBLA that the gay community was "split" about NAMBLA. From all that I have managed to find over the last 12 years, gay activists are, at best, "split" about NAMBLA, and even expelling them from the International Gay & Lesbian Association (which had UN observer status) caused the ILGA to collapse because many of the big funders supported NAMBLA. I know that many homosexuals do not support NAMBLA, and a few that I have talked to share my feelings for what should be done to this bunch of child molesters. But I have talked to way too many homosexuals over the years whose reactions range from, "NAMBLA does really good work," to "Well, I don't think much of them, and they are politically inconvenient." It is also clear that the ACLU's efforts to get child molestation laws declared unconstitutional are intended to make more 14 year old boys available for adults to manipulate into sex (at least, that's the case that they are pursuing in Kansas). I am also disturbed by the way that many fundamental freedoms, such as freedom of speech, are beginning to go away, because homosexuals object to free speech directed at their behavior--and when it comes to a conflict between the desires of homosexuals, and free speech, free speech loses. (Here's another example.) As this item points out, not only freedom of speech, but freedom of association is also under grave threat from homosexuals. I am disturbed by the manner in which the U.S. Supreme Court has decided to rewrite history because they found Texas's sodomy law not to their taste. I am disturbed by the manner in which the very real problems of AIDS in America are still spreading rapidly because of high rates of male homosexual promiscuity. I am disturbed by the way in which the courts have decided that homosexuals have a right to engage in sex in public places. I am disturbed that homosexuals are comparing enforcement of a law against sex on a public beach to being rounded up and sent to Auschwitz--and this idea is considered sufficiently respectable for a newspaper to publish it. I am disturbed that the ACLU, in its pursuit of making homosexuals happy, has decided that there is a right to engage in anonymous sex in an adult bookstore. Homosexuality is fast becoming like the slave industry in antebellum America--an institution so powerful (in spite of its small numbers), that everything else must give way to its demands. Always Nice to See The Gun Control Fanatics Admit Whose Side They Are On You recall a few weeks back, a man in Wilmette, Illinois, shot a person who forced entry in an occupied home. Of couse, the victim is now being prosecuted, because Wilmette has a ban on handgun ownership. Click here to see my coverage of that event--and the very powerful article that the victim wrote about it. An Illinois legislator has introduced a bill to create an "affirmative defense" to local bans on firearms if the gun was used otherwise lawfully in self-defense. Unsurprisingly, the gun control fanatics have a different view on the matter: But Chris Boyster of the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence disputed Bradley's contention, saying DeMar did not have the right under the ordinance to keep a handgun in his house.Yup! That's right! Shoot someone who forces entry into your home--and you deserve everything that happens to you! Gun control fanatics aren't trying to make America safer for decent people; they are trying to make America safer for those who force entry into occupied homes. Don't Know What To Make Of This Case Most of the time that you hear about a lawsuit after a defensive gun use, it is the criminal's widow suing the victim. Not this case: A man who shot a neighbor to death in self-defense last year is suing the neighbor's widow, asserting that she should have kept her mentally ill husband from regaining his guns.Now, as you probably know, I believe that there should be only a few circumstances where someone should be disarmed. This, however, seems to be one of them. This guy had a history of mental illness and crimes involving guns. What judge ordered his guns returned to his wife? This deserves a whole bunch more attention. Too Stupid to Stay Out of Jail Perhaps he is lucky, considering who he was planning to visit with the shotgun: A shotgun-armed schoolteacher who popped into a police box to ask for directions to the office of a Tokyo-based loanshark has been arrested, police said Tuesday. Wisconsin Assembly Fails to Override Governor's Veto on Concealed Carry One of the sponsors of the bill--Democrat Gary Sherman, who I encouraged you to contact about this yesterday--voted against the override. To quote Maxwell Smart, "Missed it by that much." We needed 66 votes to override; we only got 65. Gary Sherman put party loyalty above his own bill, and the position of his largely pro-gun constituents. I wonder if there will be someone new representing his district next term. I would prefer a new governor in Wisconsin, but that might be harder to arrange. Robert Blake Blames Christian Brando I saw this news story that mentioned that Robert Blake was blaming Marlon Brando's son Christian for the murder of Blake's wife. While the story mentions a plausible reason why Christian Brando might have had an interest in Mrs. Blake--at first, she claimed her illegitimate child was by Brando, not Blake--the news story leaves out a rather significant reason why Christian Brando is not such an unlikely suspect: he has a history of this sort of misbehavior. He pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in 1991 for shooting his sister's boyfriend while very drunk. Admittedly, what Brando did isn't a very serious crime in California, so I guess it's no surprise that he is out. Someone Has WAY Too Much Time On His Hands This website contains what must be one of the most...unique customized Hondas that I have ever seen--especially with the R2D2 unit installed. This is a car that belongs on this site. (Click on "One Liners" once you get there. Some of the vehicles are truly astonishing for what they say about the owner's taste.) Parody? Or Just A Sign Of Declining Standards in the Ivory Tower? This new blog purports to be an angry untenured professor at a Top Ten law school. Some people think it is actually a very clever parody of Marxist rhetoric. I am still unsure whether this is parody or not. As much as I want to dismiss it as clever parody, the experience of Professor David Deming with the Stalinist administration of the University of Oklahoma makes it likely that "Proculian Meditations" represents a view that is not unknown in the academic community--but most of his fellow totalitarian wannabes have the good sense not to be so blunt about their objectives. Why I Can't Talk Myself Into Pursuing a Ph.D. This astonishing article by Professor David Deming describes retaliation for writing a politically incorrect letter to the newspaper: I am associate professor of geology and geophysics at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. I receive teaching evaluations that run from average to outstanding. I have more scholarly publications than half the full professors in my department. But as I sit here writing, three of my four classes have been cancelled. I am scheduled to be moved out of the office I have occupied for the last twelve years into a dank hole in the basement that was never intended to be used as office space. Recent events are the culmination of four years of retaliation, intimidation, and harassment. You see, I don't have the right politics. What's worse is that I'm not submissive and I refuse to be bullied and intimidated.Even better, the liberals that run the University of Oklahoma apparently believe very strongly in 1984's "memory hole" approach to history: The archives for the campus newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily, that published my original letter and articles on the resulting controversy, have been deleted from the Daily's website. The records for the months covered by the controversy, February, March, and April, of the year 2000 are conspicuous by their absence.Read the whole article--it is enlightening how rapidly liberalism is shedding its pretense of freedom of speech, and revealing its truly Stalinist nature even at universities that aren't considered top tier. You can click here to see the University of Oklahoma student newspaper's archives--and sure enough, February through April of 2000 are simply not available. Monday, February 02, 2004
I'm So Glad That I'm Not In The Bay Area Anymore In case any of you are still wondering why living in the San Francisco Bay Area made me so hostile to homosexuality, it's because of stuff like this happening on broadcast television. This is from an FCC order fining KRON-TV $27,500 for this: Young responded to the Bureau's letter of inquiry on July 3, 2003, and provided a videotape of the ``KRON 4 Morning News'' show aired between 7:00 and 9:00 a.m. on October 4, 2002.7 During a segment of the broadcast in question, the show's hosts interviewed two male performers who tour with the stage production ``Puppetry of the Penis.''8 The performers appeared on camera wearing capes and discussed their stage show, in which they appear nude in order to manipulate and stretch their genitalia to simulate a wide variety of ``installations,'' including objects, architecture, and people.9 During the course of the interview, one of the performers asked whether they could demonstrate, by stating ``should we show you a couple of quick ones?''10 One of the show's two hosts agreed, if the demonstration was done ``quickly.''11 As the performers stood and apparently turned away from the camera to demonstrate their act to the show's hosts, the penis of one was fully exposed on-camera.12Sorry, but I really don't see any particular need to display someone's sexual organs on broadcast television, and especially at an hour when there are kids watching. What a Shock: National Review Actually Running Articles Against Gay Marriage It was beginning to seem to me that National Review was too busy trying to figure out how to get on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, but no, they ran a good article by Stanley Kurtz pointing out that where gay marriage is strongest in Scandinavia (the county of Nordland) is also where straight marriage has almost evaporated: Marriage in Nordland is in severe decline. In 2002, an extraordinary 82.27 percent of first-born children in Nordland were born out-of-wedlock. A "mere" 67.29 percent of all children born in Nordland in 2002 were born out-of-wedlock. As I explained in "The End of Marriage in Scandinavia," many of these births are to unmarried, but cohabiting, couples. Yet cohabiting couples in Scandinavia break up at two to three times the rate of married couples. Since the Norwegian tendency to marry after the second child is gradually giving way, it is likely that the 67-percent figure for all out-of-wedlock births will someday catch up to the 82-percent figure for first-born out-of-wedlock births. At that point, marriage in Nordland will be effectively dead. Another Engineer Joke A mechanical engineer is walking in the park one day, and sees one of his colleagues riding towards him on a bicycle. The colleague stops, and our engineer observes that it is really a very spiffy bicycle - carbon-fiber, all-Campy, SoftRide, Spin wheels, all the candy. 'Hey, nice bike! Where'd you get it?" "Well, it was the funneist thing", says the second engineer. "I was walking in the park, just like you are now. And this girl rides past me, on this very bicycle. A really quite attractive girl. Five minutes later, she rides past me again, but very slowly. Five minutes later, she rides past again, and look me right in the eye, and winks. And five minutes later, she rides up to me, stops, and gets off the bike, and throws it down. And she's tearing off her clothes and screaming 'I can't take it any more! I can see you're an engineer, I can't hold myself back! Right here, right now - take anything you want from me!" 'Good choice!" says the first engineer."Her clothes probably wouldn't have fit you, anyway." Why Sexual Abuse of Children is a Bad Thing Over at How Appealing!, Howard Bashman interviewed Judge Stephen Reinhardt of the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. There is not much that Reinhardt and I agree upon, but one statement in that interview does not surprise me, with all that I have read about this subject: In almost every case of which I am a |
