The economy tends to do better under Democratic Preisdents because Congressional Republicans are better at obstructing legislation than Congressional Democrats.

Discuss.

ZEntertainment has a picture from the upcoming Punisher movie. Click on the link. It’s worse than I could have possibly imagined. How can that skinny, young little punk possibly be anybody’s choice to play Frank Castle? Ugh…

More and more lately, I’ve started to be labled “conservative.” Which I most certainly am not. Were I conservative, I would probably agree with the intensely irrational stances that Stanley Kurtz takes in his latest column. But I don’t, because this article is full of arguments that are profoundly wrong.

The first argument that Kurtz makes is that the only thing apparently keeping people from sexually abusing their nephews and nieces is the presence of incest laws on the books:

To see the mechanism of our incest taboo at work, imagine a world in which consensual adult incest was legal. Once we see or hear of couples — even a relatively small number — who engage in legal, consensual, adult incestuous relationships, the whole idea of incest with minors becomes thinkable. Preventing incest with minors from becoming thinkable is the purpose of the taboo.

The reason we need an incest taboo is because there is no effective way for the state to protect children from sexual abuse by family members. Children are essentially at the mercy of the adults who care for them. So only by building into adults a psychological mechanism of disgust and horror at incest can society protect children from the psychological harm of abuse by close relatives. The taboo runs deeper than the law itself. Yet the law embodies and reinforces the taboo. Were the law to be eliminated — even for consenting adults only — the taboo on incest with minors would be weakened, or break down-maybe not in all families, or even most, but for far too many.

This is just silly. Just because there’s no law against consensual incestuous relationships doesn’t mean that the incest taboo is just going to go away, nor does it mean that people are going to start abusing minor family members. First off, the taboo against incest isn’t about preventing child abuse–it’s about preventing birth defects. Just look around the culture–there are plenty of jokes about inbreeding producing “one-eyed kids” or just plain making people stupid. Second, getting rid of laws against consensual adult incest doesn’t do anything to touch the social taboo that you shouldn’t have sex with kids, nor does it eliminate the laws against child molestation.

Secondly, Kurtz also argues in favor of the taboo against homosexuality. He bases this on a pretty common conservative argument–there are only two kinds of sex: sex for procreation and sex for pleasure.

The taboo against homosexuality works in a similar fashion. But what, exactly, does the taboo on homosexuality protect? There is more than one way to approach that question, but the short answer is: The taboo on homosexuality protects marriage. Or, to look at the same problem from a slightly different angle, the institution of Western marriage, in its most traditional form, has been protected by a many-sided taboo against all sexuality outside of its confines — and against non-procreative sexuality within it. Just as the taboo on incest reduces the temptation to child abuse, the taboo on non-marital and non-reproductive sexuality helps to cement marital unions, and helps prevent acts of adultery that would tear those unions apart.

But here’s the thing, that’s not the limit of sex. Sex within marriage should (I hope) be about pleasure–and maybe about kids, if that’s what the parents want. But sex isn’t just about those two things. At its absolute best, and hopefully that’s what it would be in marriage, sex is about the union of two souls in love (I’ll call this “sex for love” from now on). Or, as the Bible describes it, “becoming one flesh.” Conservatives usually don’t talk about this kind of sex. A cynic might presume that’s because they degrade sex so much that they can’t experience it.

Kurtz continues on, explaining the roots of the homosexuality taboo:

As an ultimate symbol of sexuality for the sake of pleasure (rather than reproduction) homosexuality has traditionally been taboo. That taboo was embodied and expressed in sodomy laws. Rigorous enforcement of these laws was secondary — and in any case, next to impossible. The important thing was the statement of collective values made by the laws against sodomy. By making homosexuality taboo, the law reinforced the idea that the highest and proper purpose of sexuality itself was to bind and energize families.

There are too major problems with Kurtz’s argument here. While it might be true that the taboo against homosexuality exists because it represents sex for pleasure, that doesn’t mean that it’s a good taboo. Because the major presumption there is the false sex for pleasure/sex for procreation dichotomy. Thus, there’s no accounting for the idea that homsexuals might have sex for love–to deepen their commitment and union with each other. The second problem with Kurtz’s argument here is that it contradicts his earlier point. Note the last line of the paragraph–Kurtz is saying that the proper purpose of sexuality is to “bind and energize families.” But it’s not sex for procreation that does that (not completely, anyway). It’s sex for love that allows for that binding and energizing. And there’s nothing stopping the family of a homosexual couple from being “bound and energized” by sex for love.

The next major argument that Kurtz makes is that allowing gays to marry will undermine the “ethos of monogamy.”

Gay marriage threatens monogamy in two ways. First, gay marriage threatens monogamy because homosexual couples — particularly male homosexual couples — tend to see monogamy as nonessential, even to the most loyal and committed relationships. Of course, advocates argue that legal gay marriage will change all that — that marriage will make gays more monogamous. But it is just as likely (indeed, far more likely) that the effect will go in the other direction — openly non-monogamous married gay couples will break the connection between marriage and monogamy.

Okay, there’s a number of problems with this argument–namely that there’s zero evidence to support this contention. Secondly, I guess, so what? Monogamy is not the norm for human beings–male or female. Marriage is about more than just who you have sex with–it’s about having a deep level of commitment to another person, and usually entails the raising of children. And while there are many people who can be happy in a monogamous marriage, there are also people who are perfectly capable of preserving a deep and loving commitment while at the same time (gasp!) having sex with other people. So long as both parties to a marriage are comfortable with an open relationship, what business is it of society’s what they do? But I daresay that Mr. Kurtz would be very surprised at the number of homosexuals who are willing to commit to a monogamous marriage.

Kurtz then goes on to a “slippery slope” argument–that legalizing gay marriage will lead to legalizing (horrors!) polygamy.

Even more powerfully, gay marriage threatens monogamy through its tendency to lead, on a slippery slope, to the legalization of polygamy and polyamory. . .

. . .It’s important to understand what the danger of openly non-monogamous gay marriages, and of legalized polygamy and polyamory, really is. The key problem here is not, say, that polygamous marriages are unfair or exploitative to women. (That is a legitimate concern, of course, but it is not the greatest social danger posed by legalized polygamy.) The real problem is the effect of openly non-monogamous gay unions, and of legalized polygamy and polyamory, on the ethos of monogamy. . .

. . .Still, the libertarian asks, Would the group marriage next door really make me leave my wife? Maybe not. Of course, the married commune next door might invite the two of you over for some fun, with potentially problematic results for your marriage. But even that is not the real problem. The deeper difficulty is simply the breaking of the taboo on adultery. Sodomy laws were barely enforced, yet they made a collective statement about social attitudes toward non-marital and non-reproductive sexuality. Similarly, incest laws are rarely invoked. Yet their existence reinforces the horror of incest, and helps prevent the sort of violations that make incestuous temptation thinkable.

Wow, I can’t begin to go into the problems with this argument. First and foremost, human beings have the freedom to choose how to act. And just the presence of a polygamous marriage next door doesn’t provide an “excuse” for somebody to deliberately break their marriage vows. The decision to commit adultery isn’t wrong because it “breaks a societal taboo,” but because it breaks the bonds of love and trust you have with your spouse.

Another problem with Kurtz’s argument is the automatic assumption that legalizing poloygamy is wrong. But why is that? First of all, polygamy has been practiced in many different cultures throughout history–monogamy isn’t necessarily the only way to have a marriage. Also, there’s a substantial argument to be made that polygamy may offer benefits to society, children, and its practicioners that monogamy simply can’t. (see the collected works of Robert A. Heinlein)

But the primary argument against Kurtz’s contentions is this: even if he’s completely right, and gay marriage would completely destroy monogamous marriage as we know it (a contention that is extraordinarily dubious), what business is that of the government’s? It’s not the government’s job to preserve societal taboos–it’s the job of government to protect the lives, rights, and property of its members. Protecting a culturally dominant view of human relationships does not fall into this category. If freedom means anything, then it must include the freedom to fail, the freedom to experience the consequences of one’s acts, and yes, the freedom to flaunt societal taboos, so long as doing so doesn’t harm someone else.

UPDATE: Stephen Green has a nice post on this, too.

Speaking of 9/11 investigations, the Congressional investigaiton into 9/11 was scheduled to be released soon. But now it look like there might be a battle brewing over that, since the CIA wants to keep most of it classified–even aspects that have already been in the public record via Congressional testimony.

I don’t put a lot of faith in the Congressional investigation, but the fact that the Administration is trying to keep this report under wraps speaks ill of any real investigaiton that the independent 9/11 Commission might be able to conduct.

(via Henry Lewis)

Mansoor Ijaz, who was among those people attempting to negotiate agreements to share intelligence with Sudan in the late 90’s, has a pretty damning column regarding deliberate obstruction on the part of elements within the Clinton State Department to prevent any such sharing of intelligence. You should read the whole thing, but here’s a taste.

SEPTEMBER 28, 1997. Sudan’s April policy shift to make cooperation on terrorism issues unconditional sparked a heated debate at the State Department, where foreign-service officers believed the U.S. should take a new approach to Khartoum, and lobbied the incoming Secretary of State — still untainted by her politicized and yet-to-be-confirmed staff — to have a fresh look. On September 28, after four months of deliberate and exhaustive interagency reviews, Sec. Albright announced that up to eight U.S. diplomats would return to Sudan to pressure its Islamic government to stop harboring Arab terrorists, and furthermore, to gather intelligence on terrorist groups operating out of Sudan — including Hezbollah, Hamas, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad.

OCTOBER 1, 1997. As the reengagement policy was taking shape, Rice, the incoming Assistant Secretary for East Africa, informally confronted the same foreign-service officers who had recommended returning diplomats to Sudan to Albright and vowed that the new policy directive would not stand. On October 1, State Department spokesman Jamie Rubin sheepishly announced an abrupt reversal of the September 28 Albright decision. Rice was confirmed by the Senate on October 9, 1997. To this day, neither Berger nor Albright nor Rice have explained to the American people why a deliberative decision of the U.S. government, made through interagency review, was overturned in such a cavalier fashion by a narrow clique of Clinton advisers when Sudan’s April offer to cooperate on terrorism issues had been made unconditionally.

Like I said, read the whole thing. But I’m starting to see a big picture emerge on the failure for any comprehensive investigation of the intelligence failures leading to 9/11. The more I read, and the more I take in, the more I’m convinced that any such investigation would cause an extraordinary amount of political damage to State Department bureaucracy, intelligence bureacracies, and influential members of both of the major parties.

Yeah, both. Note that we’ve never seen any real cry for investigation by any of the figures of any of the two major parties. My guess is that there’s a real fear on their part that any real, sustained investigation would destroy the careers of Senators, Congressmen, and both Clinton and Bush Administration officials. The political havoc would be immense. Because my gut tells me that the fault lies in a great many people–not just a handful.

Glenn Reynolds calls attention to this article, which alleges that Daniel Pearl was murdered because he discovered some rather distrubing information.

Islamic extremists killed Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl because he had discovered dangerous secrets about their ties to the Pakistani intelligence community, according to an investigation by a respected French writer.

In a 538-page book released this week, entitled Who Killed Daniel Pearl? philosopher and best-selling author Bernard-Henri Levy retraces the reporter’s final steps in Karachi before he was kidnapped and subsequently beheaded in January 2002.

Levy believes that Pearl was about to complete an article revealing that the al-Qaida terror network was close to acquiring nuclear weapons from supporters inside Pakistan’s scientific establishment.

“Pearl’s conclusion, like my own, was that in Pakistan there are atomic scientists who are also committed Islamic extremists,” Levy said in an interview with Paris Match magazine published Wednesday.

I hope this isn’t true. But it rings true, doesn’t it? Pakistan is a frustrating situation. It’s clear that its government is doing its best to contain terrorism–they saw the writing on the wall after 9/11. But on the other hand, there’s only so much it can do when elements of the ISI and other parts of the government are actively promoting terrorism. This is made all the more scary by the fact that Pakistan has nuclear weapons. Might it only be a matter of time before one of those weapons finds its way into the hands of terrorists? Is it only a matter of time before New York or Jerusalem or London disappears in atomic fire? I hope not.

But there are limits to what can be done. I mean, we can’t keep trucks of cocaine from coming across the border or illegal immigrants from being smuggled into the country from aboard ship. So how hard would it be for a boat with a nuclear bomb on board to make its way into Boston harbor and detonate?

The only way to deal with state-sponsored terrorism is to deal with the state sponsors. And that’s what we’ve been doing. But Iraq and Afghanistan were unique–countries implacably held to sponsoring terrorism no matter what. They’re the easy ones to deal with. But how do you rationally deal with countries like Pakistan, where the government IS trying to combat terrorism, but also has to fight elements of itself in order to do so? I don’t know the answer to that.

Shortly after the 9/11 attacks, what do you think was foremost in Sen. Rick Santorum’s mind? Apparently, it was protecting the country from the horrors of gay marriage.

Not long after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, U.S. Sen. Rick Santorum sent out a letter asking for money for a nonprofit group lobbying against same-sex marriages.

“I know it may sound like a huge exaggeration, particularly in light of the attack on America, but this may truly be the most important letter I ever write you,” Santorum wrote.

The letter endorsed Alexandria, Va.-based Alliance for Marriage and its campaign for a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriages. The mailing sought money so the nonprofit could flood Congress with petitions to “protect marriage between a man and a woman against the attacks of the homosexual activists.”

Nice to see that the No. 3 man in Republican politics knew what was important after 9/11. After all, terrorists just kill people. Gay couples who are married might (horrors!) raise children! Or get health insurance benefits! Or be able to visit their partner in the hospital! Man, it sure is a great thing that we have brave men in the Senate like Santorum who know what the real dangers facing America are.

(via Oliver Willis)

Eric Tam over at Antidotal has a piece on why the US soldiers were wrong to fire at the crowd of protesters. His main points are these:

The American troops claim they responded to automatic weapons fire from the crowd, and I’m sure there will be apologists who will be ready to give them every benefit of the doubt. But here’s the thing: none of the U.S. soliders were injured.

So are the soldiers who weren’t injured in the war to blame as well? Does there need to be some sort of ratio to justify any action? Like, we can’t protect ourselves unless 1 soldier is hurt for every 10 people that we take out? The training of the military is to contain any agression, with lethal force if need be, while minimizing damage to our own soldiers. So I look at this not as bloodthirsty killers out to exact death and pain on helpless citizens, but as the only way they had to control an increasingly violent and out of control crowd. They didn’t have tear gas and rubber bullets. But there’s no quick and easy way to prepare for situations such as this, or to get the right equipment out in a timely fashion.

In addition, they kept their cool as rocks were thrown until hundreds of rocks and some shots were being fired at them. There had been incidents of snipers and suicide bombers prior to this - so I imagine everyone’s nerves were on edge. When the enemy refuses to fight by the rules, things start to get messy and confusing.

The second point Eric makes is:

The following justification by the commander of the involved battalion doesn’t exactly fill me with confidence:
“How do you tell the difference between a rock and a grenade? How do we know which it is?” Quick answer: a rock doesn’t have a pin and it doesn’t explode. Longer answer: So does this mean that the U.S. forces’ rules of engagement allow troops to shoot anyone who looks like they’re about to throw a grenade-sized object? I guess we should tell those Iraqi mothers not to let their sons pick up any rocks.

Right, but you usually don’t want to wait until the object gets close enough to figure out if it’s going to explode or not. Then what do you do with it? Throw it back into the crowd? According to his logic, that would be wrong too. I guess they should have appointed some soldiers to take one for the team and jump on any grenades to protect others from the blast.

What this comes down to is that there will always be a few “bad seeds” that take advantage of situations like this to turn them into violent acts. A peaceful demonstration will quickly get out of hand when some carefully planted people start breaking out the rocks and AK-47s. When that happens, civilians, and innocent ones, are going to get hurt. But that doesn’t make it any more the fault of a group of 19 year old kids, watching a surging wall of people run towards them, throwing rocks, sticks, and whatever else they can find, and then a few shots ring out from somewhere. What do you do? I ask Mr. Tam what he would do in that situation. And, “Sitting there calmly” is not an option, because when those people reach you, there WILL be some dire consequences.

I find it amusing when someone, sitting behind their warmly glowing computer screen immediately jumps to conclusions about a situation he has never experienced, and has no idea what it’s like to be in a situation like that. What would you do if a mob surrounded your car and started jumping on it, breaking the windows, and screaming at you? Calmly wait for them to leave so you can drive away? Maybe that scenario is easier to imagine.

Military forces are NOT the best riot control troops, I will agree with Eric on this point. Specifically, military forces who have been waging war and aren’t trained in crowd control tactics. However, who else is going to do it? The Iraqi people are sure not stepping up to the plate in situations like this. The religious leaders are encouraging it, for the same antiquated reasons they always have. The international community isn’t offering up specialty SWAT and riot troops, at least not in the numbers that are required. We do what we can with what we have. Mistakes are made, yes. But it’s not out of some sort of internal bloodthirsty rage or incompetence. Watch “Rules of Engagement” with Samuel L Jackson, and I think you’ll see what kind of situation these people were in regarding being under attack and having to make tough decisions in a quick moment of uncertainty.

Charles Paul Freund has a very good column pointing out the the radical Iraqi Sh’ites making headlines about imposing a Fundamentalist government are hardly representative of the country as a whole.

In the meantime, secular Iraqis (and that includes Shi’ites, too) are gradually organizing themselves as well, though their efforts have failed to ignite a front-page media spectacle. A few days ago, for example, The Washington Post reported (on page 14) from a looted and burnt out Basra University, where the faculty had unilaterally dispensed with the old, Ba’thist dean and elected chemistry professor Mohammed Jassim in his stead. He was looking forward to an era of academic freedom.

Wrote the Post, “Iraqi science, [Jassim] contends, will emerge from its isolation. The best academics will again be free to attend conferences in Berlin and Chicago, not just Yemen and Libya, he hopes. The latest journals will arrive in the mail, along with instruments that were prohibited under U.N. sanctions. Professors will be permitted to publish their work. The prospects are, ‘to be honest, very exciting,’ Jassim said…”

This week, some 50 Iraqi writers gathered to begin rebuilding the nation’s wrecked literature. No one ordered them to do so; it was a spontaneous act. According to playwright Aziz Abdul Sahib, “We are here to revive the writing and the poetry that was banned by the regime.”

Forty political parties have organized. Artists are meeting. Newspapers have begun to appear in Baghdad (the first was published by Iraq’s Communist Party; if nothing else a reminder of pre-Ba’thist Iraqi anti-clericalism). Television, book publishing, and magazines are yet to come. In short, Iraq is only beginning to get on its feet (though, admittedly, much will depend on the Iraqi judiciary getting quickly to its feet). There will be no end of crises, both for U.S. interests and for the potential liberal secular Iraqi agenda. But there will likely be crises for those seeking a religious state as well.

Iraq is, and has been historically, a secular society. A religoius one? Well, sure. Of course, there are precedents for successful secular governments that manage to survive despite large religious populations. Currently, I live in one. Besides, it’s increasingly clear that a lot of the Islamofascist rhetoric is being spurred on by the Mullahs of Iran, whose own grip on power becomes more precarious any day. I’d say that a sharia state being established in Iraq is a pretty remote possibility, as things stand now.

Sometimes, the most wonderful inventions come about through accident. Case in point: researchers at Wake Forest have inadvertantly discovered a strain of mice whose immune system fights off cancer.

During a routine study at the Comprehensive Cancer Center of Wake Forest University led by Zheng Cui, researchers administered a virulent type of cancer cell to a variety of strains of laboratory rats and mice. Typically, these injections lead to tumor growth in the abdomen within two weeks, and the cancer subsequently spreads to other vital organs. One male mouse, however, did not show any signs of tumor growth despite repeated injections. When the mouse bred with a normal female, his offspring retained the ability to fight off cancer. This ability has been passed down through seven generations so far, and there are currently 700 of the cancer-fighting animals, which are normal in every other way. Among these animals, their abilities to avoid cancer vary slightly. Some never develop any signs of the disease after an injection of cancer cells, whereas others initially show signs of cancerous growth that later spontaneously recedes. Cui notes that after multiple injections of cancerous cells, “the mice became healthy and immediately resumed normal activities including mating.”

Given the surprising results of some inadvertant discoveries in the past, it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if this is one of those breakthroughts that ultimately leads to the end of cancer. Cool stuff.