I spent about an hour today in the area of the 10th green at the Saucon Valley Country Club watching the third round of the 2009 Women’s Open Golf Championship. It’s a short par 4, listed at 332 yards. However, the green is significantly elevated above the fairway and surrounded by very deep sand traps and thick four-inch-high grass. In addition, the green itself is of a sinuous and undulating nature, with large swatches of it dripping with menace. There are places on the green that will not hold a golf ball. If you place a ball by hand in one of these Bermuda-trianglelike areas, it will roll completely off the green and come to rest somewhere in the vicinity of Bethesda, Maryland, though the Saucon Valley Country Club itself is located in Bethelem, Pennsylvania.
For an hour, golfer after golfer approached this challenge in exactly the same fashion. They would attempt to hit a ball in the middle of the fairway about 270 yards, avoiding all the evil bits close to the green and leaving them with a short wedge shot onto a forgiving part of the green. The successful ones managed to do this, make two putts for a par, and slink off to the 11th tee, mopping their troubled brows as they slunk.
But they were not always successful. Paula Creamer, the fourth-ranked female golfer in the world, required seven shots to accomplish her mission. Many others found the suggested four shots an insufficient number.
Then, toward the end of my hour at the 10th, a young lady with the unlikely name of Eun Hee Ji stepped to the tee 332 yards from the flag and knocked her ball 308 yards, depositing it neatly on the front part of the green. The multitudes (self included) were simply stunned. She drove the green! No one else had even attempted it. I think I had assumed it wasn’t possible, and I wasn’t the only one, because when she arrived at the green, the crowd went a bit wacky, cheering and hooting and screaming its welcome, which Ms. Ji acknowledged with such girlish modesty that it made me a bit embarrassed we had cheered so loud. With two putts, she claimed her birdie and walked calmly off to the next hole to another thunderous ovation.
With the sang-froid of a mob assassin, there is much to admire about Ms. Ji (or, as I like to call her, Eun). But she impressed me in another way as well.
On the LPGA tour, there are still a few women who look like refrigerators, but they are all in their late 30’s or 40’s and they don’t win a lot anymore. Virtually all the other players, including most of the stars, are 22 years old with rock-hard muscles in the arms and legs and not an ounce of fat anywhere. Regardless of their country of origin, they wear short, tight skirts (white or pastel), a polo shirt one size too small (with a couple of buttons undone), and color-coordinated caps, hair ribbons and the like. Until you’ve watched them for a while, it’s impossible to tell them apart since they all look like they are on their way to the mall to spend the afternoon hanging with their BFF’s.
Eun, however, doesn’t look like that. First of all, she can’t be bigger than 5’ 2”, and if she weighs 115 pounds, my name is Barack Obama. More importantly, she doesn’t look like much of a shopper. Yesterday, she wore sweat pants and a loose fitting top that provided no suggestion of her shape. A black baseball cap was tilted forward so it was difficult to get a clear look at her face. If you want perky and cute, Eun may not be the girl for you. If you want somebody to hit a golf ball 300 yards, however….
She was in second place after Saturday, and she has won only one tournament in her two years on the tour, so she’s not a lock in the 2009 Open. The wins will come, though, and I’ll be rooting for her.
Copyright 2009 Michael Kubacki
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Sunday, July 5, 2009
WHY OBAMACARE?
A couple weeks ago, I was chatting with a Scotsman who now lives in the Philly suburbs. He's politically conservative in many ways, and of course, he has lived under the UK's National Health Service regime, so I asked him his views on Obamacare.
His answer surprised me. "Well," he said, "here in America I can go to see my doctor any time I want, but I wonder if people don't go to the doctor a little too much. America might benefit from a little rationing. If your knee hurts, what's wrong with taking ibuprofen for a few weeks until you get a doctor to see you?"
Later, he surprised me again. We were discussing the Obama administration's plans (a la Europe) to mandate four weeks of paid vacation for all workers, and he said, "That's fine. I could use more vacation, couldn't you?"
One of the issues conservatives puzzle over regarding Obamacare (which is frequently the topic on talk radio) is simply this: "Why? Why are Obama and the Democrats doing this?" After all, they know what the results will be just from what has happened in other countries. They know that mammography has virtually disappeared for Swedish women and they know about the armed guards (to keep order) at the doors of Swedish hospitals. They know that dying Brits can wait hours for an ambulance and they know that National Health Service hospitals in the UK look like nothing so much as Dickensian-era work-houses. They know British cancer patients over the age of seventy each get an allotment for palliative care and hospice, but nothing for treatment. They've seen the clinics in New England with big signs that say "Canadian Checks Accepted" (in Canada, the waiting lists are long and private health care is illegal). Maybe the American people are not all that familiar with what government health care looks like around the world, but Obama knows and Pelosi knows and Reid knows, so why are they doing this? Why are they going down this path?
And I think my Scottish ex-pat pal provides the answer. Though he can be bitterly sardonic about political correctness and though he has no illusions about the jihadists, he nevertheless grew up in the UK. Despite his free-market, conservative political bent, the entitlement mindset is burned into his consciousness. Any conservative raised in the US would instantly realize that federally-mandated vacations would put millions of people out of work, but no one raised in a welfare state as pervasive as that of the UK can ever look at it that way.
And that's the reason Obama and the Democrats are pushing Obamacare, regardless of the consequences. Once there is national health care, a tipping point is reached, and the relationship of the citizen to his government is changed fundamentally. The primary issue in all future political campaigns becomes entitlements, rather than national security or free speech or abortion or anything relating to our values or philosophy. In England, in Belgium, in Canada, the main issue in every election is "how many weeks of vacation will you give me?" or "will I get a free root canal?" Once the individual becomes dependent on the government for health care, for life itself, everything else fades into the background.
When this happens, and the political playing field is altered, Democrats will have a permanent advantage over Republicans, since no one can beat Democrats in the what-will-you-give-me-now sweepstakes. And that is why Democrats are pushing so hard for Obamacare, regardless of its merits.
Ten days ago, the House passed the largest tax increase in American history. If it gets through the Senate and becomes law, every industry that can move to another country will do so, unemployment will soar, and not many of us will be able to afford to turn on the thermostat in January. But though the energy bill would be a nightmare if it passes, it could also be (with great difficulty), repealed. Once Obamacare becomes law, however, it will almost impossible to put the cork back in the bottle. America will be changed forever. At that point, we become just another dying European welfare state.
Copyright 2009 Michael Kubacki
His answer surprised me. "Well," he said, "here in America I can go to see my doctor any time I want, but I wonder if people don't go to the doctor a little too much. America might benefit from a little rationing. If your knee hurts, what's wrong with taking ibuprofen for a few weeks until you get a doctor to see you?"
Later, he surprised me again. We were discussing the Obama administration's plans (a la Europe) to mandate four weeks of paid vacation for all workers, and he said, "That's fine. I could use more vacation, couldn't you?"
One of the issues conservatives puzzle over regarding Obamacare (which is frequently the topic on talk radio) is simply this: "Why? Why are Obama and the Democrats doing this?" After all, they know what the results will be just from what has happened in other countries. They know that mammography has virtually disappeared for Swedish women and they know about the armed guards (to keep order) at the doors of Swedish hospitals. They know that dying Brits can wait hours for an ambulance and they know that National Health Service hospitals in the UK look like nothing so much as Dickensian-era work-houses. They know British cancer patients over the age of seventy each get an allotment for palliative care and hospice, but nothing for treatment. They've seen the clinics in New England with big signs that say "Canadian Checks Accepted" (in Canada, the waiting lists are long and private health care is illegal). Maybe the American people are not all that familiar with what government health care looks like around the world, but Obama knows and Pelosi knows and Reid knows, so why are they doing this? Why are they going down this path?
And I think my Scottish ex-pat pal provides the answer. Though he can be bitterly sardonic about political correctness and though he has no illusions about the jihadists, he nevertheless grew up in the UK. Despite his free-market, conservative political bent, the entitlement mindset is burned into his consciousness. Any conservative raised in the US would instantly realize that federally-mandated vacations would put millions of people out of work, but no one raised in a welfare state as pervasive as that of the UK can ever look at it that way.
And that's the reason Obama and the Democrats are pushing Obamacare, regardless of the consequences. Once there is national health care, a tipping point is reached, and the relationship of the citizen to his government is changed fundamentally. The primary issue in all future political campaigns becomes entitlements, rather than national security or free speech or abortion or anything relating to our values or philosophy. In England, in Belgium, in Canada, the main issue in every election is "how many weeks of vacation will you give me?" or "will I get a free root canal?" Once the individual becomes dependent on the government for health care, for life itself, everything else fades into the background.
When this happens, and the political playing field is altered, Democrats will have a permanent advantage over Republicans, since no one can beat Democrats in the what-will-you-give-me-now sweepstakes. And that is why Democrats are pushing so hard for Obamacare, regardless of its merits.
Ten days ago, the House passed the largest tax increase in American history. If it gets through the Senate and becomes law, every industry that can move to another country will do so, unemployment will soar, and not many of us will be able to afford to turn on the thermostat in January. But though the energy bill would be a nightmare if it passes, it could also be (with great difficulty), repealed. Once Obamacare becomes law, however, it will almost impossible to put the cork back in the bottle. America will be changed forever. At that point, we become just another dying European welfare state.
Copyright 2009 Michael Kubacki
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
MICHAEL JACKSON
I’m willing to cut Michael Jackson a lot of slack. He was a talented person, and talented people sometimes have demons that would not be there if they were not so talented.
People who are celebrities as children, and who never have a proper childhood, have an additional burden. Some grow up and become responsible adults, but some don’t. When you look at Lindsay Lohan today, you see the hard face of a 22-year-old who is going on 50, and it’s sad. Maybe she will find herself, but it’s not certain. And Michael Jackson’s childhood was far worse than hers. Apparently, he was never able to have any sort of adult relationship; he was an emotional cripple. And it wasn’t really his fault.
I’ll go further. I was pleased by his acquittal in the child molestation case. I viewed it as just another high-profile case by a prosecutor who wanted some headlines, like those involving Martha Stewart, Rush Limbaugh and the Duke lacrosse team. The payoff to the kid who had some questionable overnights at Neverland was more troubling, but I can’t say I condemned him for that either. For MJ, $20 million at that time was like me paying somebody a buck. He had a reputation to protect. It’s Hollywood. None of us really know what happened.
However, there is a place where sympathy must end. One can have pity for a madman, but the pity ends when he begins to use other people’s lives to slake his personal demons.
I’m talking, of course, about “the children.”
Who are these kids? They were not his biological children, we now learn, and there is a serious question about whether they are the children of his “wife,” Debbie Rowe, who is alleged to have been merely a surrogate. What were they to Michael Jackson? Pets? Human versions of his famous chimp? Perhaps that explains why they have never been educated. In any event, the purpose they served in his twisted psyche is now clear.
First, they were evidence he was “normal,” a heterosexual and a dad. Worse, however, is that he created them and used them to assuage his own self-hatred, his loathing for his black skin. There is no reason to think he could not have had children of his own. Even if the thought of sex with a female was nauseating to him, he could easily have arranged for an in vitro coupling. But that child would have been black, wouldn’t it? And that wouldn’t do at all. That would give the lie to the fantasy he had created for himself in all his skin-lightening procedures and plastic surgeries. And that fantasy had to be served, apparently, at all costs. Even at the cost of others’ lives.
Copyright 2009 Michael Kubacki
People who are celebrities as children, and who never have a proper childhood, have an additional burden. Some grow up and become responsible adults, but some don’t. When you look at Lindsay Lohan today, you see the hard face of a 22-year-old who is going on 50, and it’s sad. Maybe she will find herself, but it’s not certain. And Michael Jackson’s childhood was far worse than hers. Apparently, he was never able to have any sort of adult relationship; he was an emotional cripple. And it wasn’t really his fault.
I’ll go further. I was pleased by his acquittal in the child molestation case. I viewed it as just another high-profile case by a prosecutor who wanted some headlines, like those involving Martha Stewart, Rush Limbaugh and the Duke lacrosse team. The payoff to the kid who had some questionable overnights at Neverland was more troubling, but I can’t say I condemned him for that either. For MJ, $20 million at that time was like me paying somebody a buck. He had a reputation to protect. It’s Hollywood. None of us really know what happened.
However, there is a place where sympathy must end. One can have pity for a madman, but the pity ends when he begins to use other people’s lives to slake his personal demons.
I’m talking, of course, about “the children.”
Who are these kids? They were not his biological children, we now learn, and there is a serious question about whether they are the children of his “wife,” Debbie Rowe, who is alleged to have been merely a surrogate. What were they to Michael Jackson? Pets? Human versions of his famous chimp? Perhaps that explains why they have never been educated. In any event, the purpose they served in his twisted psyche is now clear.
First, they were evidence he was “normal,” a heterosexual and a dad. Worse, however, is that he created them and used them to assuage his own self-hatred, his loathing for his black skin. There is no reason to think he could not have had children of his own. Even if the thought of sex with a female was nauseating to him, he could easily have arranged for an in vitro coupling. But that child would have been black, wouldn’t it? And that wouldn’t do at all. That would give the lie to the fantasy he had created for himself in all his skin-lightening procedures and plastic surgeries. And that fantasy had to be served, apparently, at all costs. Even at the cost of others’ lives.
Copyright 2009 Michael Kubacki
Saturday, May 9, 2009
MORAL HAZARD, AIG AND THE INSURANCE BUSINESS
The insurance business has always been viewed with some suspicion by the law, governments and the moral arbiters of society. This is because there are obvious dangers in insulating people from the consequences of their actions, or even providing financial incentives to do the wrong thing. Insurance contracts have always been subject to the thorough scrutiny of law courts, and certain types of insurance arrangements have long been illegal.
Perhaps the best-known example is the “Slayer’s Bounty” doctrine of the Common Law, which provides that a killer cannot benefit financially from his actions. A husband who murders his wife thus will not inherit her wealth, and will not be permitted to collect proceeds of a life insurance policy naming him as beneficiary. For similar reasons, you are not allowed to take out a life insurance policy on another person without that person’s knowledge and consent. Other dangers arising out of insurance contracts are more subtle, giving rise to complex arguments about “moral hazard,” the creation of disincentives for responsible behavior.
Over the centuries of our jurisprudence, we have determined that insurance is appropriate if it protects us against random catastrophic events (“acts of God”) for which the holder of the policy cannot be held responsible. A certain number of ships are going to be caught in horrendous storms, a certain number of people are going to be hit by lightening, a certain number of buildings are going to burn down---all these are legitimate subjects of insurance. Even here, there may be some element of human responsibility, of course, and then there will be arguments about whether the insurance company will have to pay on the policy. If you intentionally burn down your house, you can’t collect. But what if you were merely negligent in keeping that bucket of oily rags in the garage? Well, that might be something for a court to decide. We might view the danger of oily rags as something a reasonable person might overlook, but only if we do not encourage carelessness in the process. This is where public policy and the courts become involved in a private insurance contract. It is important to everyone that people take fire prevention seriously, so insurance that might reduce the financial burden of negligent behavior becomes a matter of public interest.
There are many risks where society insists that the risk-taker not be permitted to reduce his exposure through insurance. Suppose John Doe opens a shoe store, for example. John knows the shoe business, he is sufficiently capitalized, he has studied the local traffic patterns and competition, he knows what his expenses are likely to be, and he rationally projects his business will make $100,000 profit its first year. Based upon his projections and all the homework he has done, John goes to his insurance agent and tries to buy an insurance policy guaranteeing him a $100,000 profit in the event fate should intervene in some fashion and limit his success.
Spend a minute thinking about this, and you begin to see the problems. John may well have all the tools in place to succeed in the shoe business, but what is his motivation to do so? Without such an insurance policy, with his savings and his dreams and his livelihood on the line, he might well make his $100,000 profit. But with such a policy, how long will it be before John begins to wonder why he is working 16-hour days and haggling with suppliers and chasing shoplifters and sweeping the backroom and smiling at rude customers and shoveling snow off the sidewalk? What’s the point? He’s getting his $100,000 at the end of the year whether he succeeds or not.
There was a time, and it wasn’t that long ago, when the insurance business was run by crusty old guys who smoked cigars in downtown office buildings and called their secretaries “Hon.” (Think Edward G. Robinson in Double Indemnity.) Back then, before insurance became just one piece of a globalized “Financial Services” industry with tens of thousands of computer-generated investment products that even financially-sophisticated people struggle to understand, the very idea that John Doe was seeking such an insurance policy would have produced only laughter. Now, I’m not so sure.
When someone opens a shoe business, what is the fundamental risk he is undertaking? It’s that he won’t make any money at it. Maybe he doesn’t manage employees well, maybe he doesn’t schmooze well with other businessmen, maybe customers just don’t like him---there are a thousand reasons he may fail, and the crusty old guys in the downtown office buildings wouldn’t insure against any of them. They would insure against fire and flood and slips on the sidewalk and theft and hurricanes---random disasters that could devastate John’s business but which he can’t really plan for---but they wouldn’t insure against the fundamental risk he is undertaking, that John himself is not up to the job.
The crusty old guys would have realized instinctively that such a thing is antithetical to the very idea of insurance. In addition, they may have assumed that such insurance was illegal. This brings us to the public policy argument.
You and I, and society in general, want a shoe store that provides us with the latest styles at competitive prices in a situation where the people selling us shoes care what we want. They don’t care about us “as people,” of course; they just want to get us to exchange our money for their shoes. But that’s fine. That’s all I want from them. I’m not looking for a marriage partner. I want them to care enough about my shoe needs that they are willing to go to the trouble to find out what I want and offer it to me at a price I’m willing to pay. It takes real effort to do that, but shoe-sellers are motivated to do it by prospect of making money. The desire to accommodate us is what makes shopping a relatively pleasant experience for most people. It’s why most of us would rather go shopping for shoes than visit the Department of Motor Vehicles, where the desire to please us is conspicuous by its absence.
And how does the shoe-seller find out what I really want? It’s not necessarily going to be what I say I want, or what I think I should want, or what some politician feels would be best for me. Throughout human history, only one method has been found: the pricing system, because of the information it conveys. If I am willing to take money out of my pocket and exchange it for a pair of shoes, it means that the shoes are worth more to me than the money is, and this is critical information for the shoe-seller. And since he’s charging me more than the shoes are worth to him (ensuring a profit), he’s happy too. The pricing system, and the lure of profit, is what makes the whole system work, and where it is absent, there is no mechanism to identify what consumers really want, and thus no way for producers to provide it. There are many reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union, but this is certainly one of them.
There’s another reason we don’t (or didn’t used to) allow insurance for the risk that a capitalist will fail. At any given moment, there is a finite amount of capital in the world, and it hurts all of us when some of it just sits around doing nothing. If John Doe can get insurance for his projected $100,000 profit, his shoe store may sit there indefinitely, performing no real function in society. Not only will customers be displeased with it, but John’s capital will be locked into a venture that is producing no wealth and no growth. John gets his $100,000, of course, but if he were truly successful, he might open another store, or he might sponsor a little league team, or he might give some of his money to charity. We, as a society, want John Doe to succeed. And if he doesn’t succeed, we want him to fail. We want somebody else to get John’s storefront and put a tire store in it, or a Starbucks---some place where we can happily exchange our money for a product or service we desire.
Failure is arguable better for John Doe, too. If he shuts down and salvages whatever money he can from his failure, he may learn from his mistakes and come back with a successful business in the future.
This is why the crusty old insurance guys would never insure against the fundamental risk of an enterprise. They would insure against a ship sinking in a storm, but not against the possibility that the cargo could not be sold for a profit. They wouldn’t insure against someone failing a bar exam. They wouldn’t insure a casino against losses at the baccarat table. It’s bad for everyone to insure people against their own failure. Human nature being what it is, insurance like that only makes failure more likely.
All of which brings us to AIG, which used to be run by a quintessential crusty old insurance guy named Hank Greenberg until he was forced out in a moral crusade waged by famed moral-crusader Eliot Spitzer. It was only after Greenberg’s departure that the more modern (and less crusty) financial geniuses who took over AIG figured out a way to lose a bazillion dollars.
The selling and reselling (and re-reselling) of sub-prime mortgages featured two mechanisms designed to insulate the investor from any knowledge of underlying facts relating to any specific mortgage or any specific borrower. The first was “bundling,” where thousands of such mortgages would be joined in a single package for investment purposes. This was supposed to provide a measure of safety for financial firms that bought the bundles. Buying one mortgage is always a risk because it might go into default, but if you buy thousands, and your data and assumptions are correct, the default percentage is quite predictable. Theoretically.
The second mechanism was “securitization,” which is where derivatives were created. Instead of buying a share of all the mortgages, you would buy a slice (a “tranche”) of each mortgage. For example, you might buy a security representing the income to be generated only in the seventh year of thousands of 30-year mortgages.
Some of our largest financial institutions were major participants in the market for these derivatives. However, the two mechanisms of bundling and securitization meant it was extremely difficult for a buyer of these securities to determine the real value of any of the underlying mortgages. Performing any sort of due diligence on such a security would mean personally investigating thousands of individual borrowers and then attempting to determine a value for the particular slice of that person’s mortgage you were buying (along with thousands of other slices). Instead, the institutions that bought them relied on the assumptions of those marketing the securities.
What happened next was inevitable. Since there was a large appetite in the markets for these mortgage instruments, and it was next to impossible to independently verify their value, unscrupulous mortgage brokers and real estate agents began to arrange mortgages for people who did not qualify for them, even under the lowered standards of the sub-prime mortgage market. In addition to outright fraud, there was simply no incentive to investigate whether a borrower who said he made $40,000 a year actually made $40,000 a year. If a mortgage could be written, it was written, and immediately re-sold to the derivatives market where it would disappear in a sea of other mortgages. It worked as long as real estate values were increasing at unsustainable levels, but when that bubble burst, defaults and foreclosures sky-rocketed.
In the derivatives market, AIG’s slice of all these questionable mortgages was the risk of default. AIG is, after all, an insurance company, so they sold insurance against default and foreclosure, collecting premiums in the process. For those marketing these derivatives, AIG’s role was a godsend, since it enabled all the other slices of the mortgages to be sold “risk-free.”
What’s wrong with this picture? Well, I would say the risk of default is the fundamental risk a lender faces when writing a mortgage. What AIG did here was the equivalent of insuring Joe Doe against the possibility he wouldn’t make money in the shoe business, and thereby encouraging Joe Doe not to make money in the shoe business. And this is just not something an insurance company run by crusty old insurance guys would ever have done. You want to write a mortgage? Fine. In days gone by, AIG would insure every risk related to that mortgage except the risk that you used poor judgment in extending the funds in the first place. Their decision to change that policy is the reason for their downfall.
But, of course, they never really saw it coming, and that is because many financial instruments today are created by computer programs and are so complex that even professionals cannot properly evaluate them. More importantly, issues of moral hazard and other basic tenets of the insurance business get lost in the confusion. Insuring against foreclosure for thousands of mortgages you know nothing about is simply a stupid thing to do, and you don’t need an MBA to figure that out. It’s a matter of common sense. Unfortunately, the nature of these investments is so convoluted that common sense can gain no purchase.
The complexity of even the most basic sorts of investments is such that no human being can account for all the variables involved. We all know what wheat is and what it is used for and how it is grown, but no one knows what wheat will cost a year from now. The mechanics of a standard 30-year mortgage is also within our comprehension, but that doesn’t mean anyone on earth can tell you what interest rates will be in 2015. Nevertheless, if you spend your entire career studying wheat or mortgages, you can arrive at educated guesses that may enable you to make money in those complex worlds.
But the bundling and securitizing of investments that already challenge our understanding makes one wonder whether they are purposely designed to defy analysis (and create incentives for fraud). Whether purposeful or not, that is the effect. The complexity of modern financial instruments is an extremely dangerous design flaw in our markets, especially since the dangers are multiplied by the globalization of finance. Now, instead of destroying a single company, the proliferation of these financial instruments can bring down nations.
Copyright 2009 Michael Kubacki
Perhaps the best-known example is the “Slayer’s Bounty” doctrine of the Common Law, which provides that a killer cannot benefit financially from his actions. A husband who murders his wife thus will not inherit her wealth, and will not be permitted to collect proceeds of a life insurance policy naming him as beneficiary. For similar reasons, you are not allowed to take out a life insurance policy on another person without that person’s knowledge and consent. Other dangers arising out of insurance contracts are more subtle, giving rise to complex arguments about “moral hazard,” the creation of disincentives for responsible behavior.
Over the centuries of our jurisprudence, we have determined that insurance is appropriate if it protects us against random catastrophic events (“acts of God”) for which the holder of the policy cannot be held responsible. A certain number of ships are going to be caught in horrendous storms, a certain number of people are going to be hit by lightening, a certain number of buildings are going to burn down---all these are legitimate subjects of insurance. Even here, there may be some element of human responsibility, of course, and then there will be arguments about whether the insurance company will have to pay on the policy. If you intentionally burn down your house, you can’t collect. But what if you were merely negligent in keeping that bucket of oily rags in the garage? Well, that might be something for a court to decide. We might view the danger of oily rags as something a reasonable person might overlook, but only if we do not encourage carelessness in the process. This is where public policy and the courts become involved in a private insurance contract. It is important to everyone that people take fire prevention seriously, so insurance that might reduce the financial burden of negligent behavior becomes a matter of public interest.
There are many risks where society insists that the risk-taker not be permitted to reduce his exposure through insurance. Suppose John Doe opens a shoe store, for example. John knows the shoe business, he is sufficiently capitalized, he has studied the local traffic patterns and competition, he knows what his expenses are likely to be, and he rationally projects his business will make $100,000 profit its first year. Based upon his projections and all the homework he has done, John goes to his insurance agent and tries to buy an insurance policy guaranteeing him a $100,000 profit in the event fate should intervene in some fashion and limit his success.
Spend a minute thinking about this, and you begin to see the problems. John may well have all the tools in place to succeed in the shoe business, but what is his motivation to do so? Without such an insurance policy, with his savings and his dreams and his livelihood on the line, he might well make his $100,000 profit. But with such a policy, how long will it be before John begins to wonder why he is working 16-hour days and haggling with suppliers and chasing shoplifters and sweeping the backroom and smiling at rude customers and shoveling snow off the sidewalk? What’s the point? He’s getting his $100,000 at the end of the year whether he succeeds or not.
There was a time, and it wasn’t that long ago, when the insurance business was run by crusty old guys who smoked cigars in downtown office buildings and called their secretaries “Hon.” (Think Edward G. Robinson in Double Indemnity.) Back then, before insurance became just one piece of a globalized “Financial Services” industry with tens of thousands of computer-generated investment products that even financially-sophisticated people struggle to understand, the very idea that John Doe was seeking such an insurance policy would have produced only laughter. Now, I’m not so sure.
When someone opens a shoe business, what is the fundamental risk he is undertaking? It’s that he won’t make any money at it. Maybe he doesn’t manage employees well, maybe he doesn’t schmooze well with other businessmen, maybe customers just don’t like him---there are a thousand reasons he may fail, and the crusty old guys in the downtown office buildings wouldn’t insure against any of them. They would insure against fire and flood and slips on the sidewalk and theft and hurricanes---random disasters that could devastate John’s business but which he can’t really plan for---but they wouldn’t insure against the fundamental risk he is undertaking, that John himself is not up to the job.
The crusty old guys would have realized instinctively that such a thing is antithetical to the very idea of insurance. In addition, they may have assumed that such insurance was illegal. This brings us to the public policy argument.
You and I, and society in general, want a shoe store that provides us with the latest styles at competitive prices in a situation where the people selling us shoes care what we want. They don’t care about us “as people,” of course; they just want to get us to exchange our money for their shoes. But that’s fine. That’s all I want from them. I’m not looking for a marriage partner. I want them to care enough about my shoe needs that they are willing to go to the trouble to find out what I want and offer it to me at a price I’m willing to pay. It takes real effort to do that, but shoe-sellers are motivated to do it by prospect of making money. The desire to accommodate us is what makes shopping a relatively pleasant experience for most people. It’s why most of us would rather go shopping for shoes than visit the Department of Motor Vehicles, where the desire to please us is conspicuous by its absence.
And how does the shoe-seller find out what I really want? It’s not necessarily going to be what I say I want, or what I think I should want, or what some politician feels would be best for me. Throughout human history, only one method has been found: the pricing system, because of the information it conveys. If I am willing to take money out of my pocket and exchange it for a pair of shoes, it means that the shoes are worth more to me than the money is, and this is critical information for the shoe-seller. And since he’s charging me more than the shoes are worth to him (ensuring a profit), he’s happy too. The pricing system, and the lure of profit, is what makes the whole system work, and where it is absent, there is no mechanism to identify what consumers really want, and thus no way for producers to provide it. There are many reasons for the fall of the Soviet Union, but this is certainly one of them.
There’s another reason we don’t (or didn’t used to) allow insurance for the risk that a capitalist will fail. At any given moment, there is a finite amount of capital in the world, and it hurts all of us when some of it just sits around doing nothing. If John Doe can get insurance for his projected $100,000 profit, his shoe store may sit there indefinitely, performing no real function in society. Not only will customers be displeased with it, but John’s capital will be locked into a venture that is producing no wealth and no growth. John gets his $100,000, of course, but if he were truly successful, he might open another store, or he might sponsor a little league team, or he might give some of his money to charity. We, as a society, want John Doe to succeed. And if he doesn’t succeed, we want him to fail. We want somebody else to get John’s storefront and put a tire store in it, or a Starbucks---some place where we can happily exchange our money for a product or service we desire.
Failure is arguable better for John Doe, too. If he shuts down and salvages whatever money he can from his failure, he may learn from his mistakes and come back with a successful business in the future.
This is why the crusty old insurance guys would never insure against the fundamental risk of an enterprise. They would insure against a ship sinking in a storm, but not against the possibility that the cargo could not be sold for a profit. They wouldn’t insure against someone failing a bar exam. They wouldn’t insure a casino against losses at the baccarat table. It’s bad for everyone to insure people against their own failure. Human nature being what it is, insurance like that only makes failure more likely.
All of which brings us to AIG, which used to be run by a quintessential crusty old insurance guy named Hank Greenberg until he was forced out in a moral crusade waged by famed moral-crusader Eliot Spitzer. It was only after Greenberg’s departure that the more modern (and less crusty) financial geniuses who took over AIG figured out a way to lose a bazillion dollars.
The selling and reselling (and re-reselling) of sub-prime mortgages featured two mechanisms designed to insulate the investor from any knowledge of underlying facts relating to any specific mortgage or any specific borrower. The first was “bundling,” where thousands of such mortgages would be joined in a single package for investment purposes. This was supposed to provide a measure of safety for financial firms that bought the bundles. Buying one mortgage is always a risk because it might go into default, but if you buy thousands, and your data and assumptions are correct, the default percentage is quite predictable. Theoretically.
The second mechanism was “securitization,” which is where derivatives were created. Instead of buying a share of all the mortgages, you would buy a slice (a “tranche”) of each mortgage. For example, you might buy a security representing the income to be generated only in the seventh year of thousands of 30-year mortgages.
Some of our largest financial institutions were major participants in the market for these derivatives. However, the two mechanisms of bundling and securitization meant it was extremely difficult for a buyer of these securities to determine the real value of any of the underlying mortgages. Performing any sort of due diligence on such a security would mean personally investigating thousands of individual borrowers and then attempting to determine a value for the particular slice of that person’s mortgage you were buying (along with thousands of other slices). Instead, the institutions that bought them relied on the assumptions of those marketing the securities.
What happened next was inevitable. Since there was a large appetite in the markets for these mortgage instruments, and it was next to impossible to independently verify their value, unscrupulous mortgage brokers and real estate agents began to arrange mortgages for people who did not qualify for them, even under the lowered standards of the sub-prime mortgage market. In addition to outright fraud, there was simply no incentive to investigate whether a borrower who said he made $40,000 a year actually made $40,000 a year. If a mortgage could be written, it was written, and immediately re-sold to the derivatives market where it would disappear in a sea of other mortgages. It worked as long as real estate values were increasing at unsustainable levels, but when that bubble burst, defaults and foreclosures sky-rocketed.
In the derivatives market, AIG’s slice of all these questionable mortgages was the risk of default. AIG is, after all, an insurance company, so they sold insurance against default and foreclosure, collecting premiums in the process. For those marketing these derivatives, AIG’s role was a godsend, since it enabled all the other slices of the mortgages to be sold “risk-free.”
What’s wrong with this picture? Well, I would say the risk of default is the fundamental risk a lender faces when writing a mortgage. What AIG did here was the equivalent of insuring Joe Doe against the possibility he wouldn’t make money in the shoe business, and thereby encouraging Joe Doe not to make money in the shoe business. And this is just not something an insurance company run by crusty old insurance guys would ever have done. You want to write a mortgage? Fine. In days gone by, AIG would insure every risk related to that mortgage except the risk that you used poor judgment in extending the funds in the first place. Their decision to change that policy is the reason for their downfall.
But, of course, they never really saw it coming, and that is because many financial instruments today are created by computer programs and are so complex that even professionals cannot properly evaluate them. More importantly, issues of moral hazard and other basic tenets of the insurance business get lost in the confusion. Insuring against foreclosure for thousands of mortgages you know nothing about is simply a stupid thing to do, and you don’t need an MBA to figure that out. It’s a matter of common sense. Unfortunately, the nature of these investments is so convoluted that common sense can gain no purchase.
The complexity of even the most basic sorts of investments is such that no human being can account for all the variables involved. We all know what wheat is and what it is used for and how it is grown, but no one knows what wheat will cost a year from now. The mechanics of a standard 30-year mortgage is also within our comprehension, but that doesn’t mean anyone on earth can tell you what interest rates will be in 2015. Nevertheless, if you spend your entire career studying wheat or mortgages, you can arrive at educated guesses that may enable you to make money in those complex worlds.
But the bundling and securitizing of investments that already challenge our understanding makes one wonder whether they are purposely designed to defy analysis (and create incentives for fraud). Whether purposeful or not, that is the effect. The complexity of modern financial instruments is an extremely dangerous design flaw in our markets, especially since the dangers are multiplied by the globalization of finance. Now, instead of destroying a single company, the proliferation of these financial instruments can bring down nations.
Copyright 2009 Michael Kubacki
Friday, October 31, 2008
BARACK OBAMA: AN ALTERNATE VIEW
A couple of years ago, I witnessed an altercation in a Rite-Aid between two large women over the question of which one had been first in line to the cash register. As often happens in these impromptu urban contretemps, there were no preliminary remarks or introductory material. Rather, my first inkling there was any problem at all was a 110-decibel blast, issued by the party of the first part, the shock wave from which knocked me half a fathom leeward. “WHAT’S YOUR FUCKING HURRY, BITCH?” she inquired.
Then the situation deteriorated.
They didn’t know each other, and they were both young and strongly built. There never seemed to be any danger the pair would actually grapple, but they stood about fifteen feet apart, arms akimbo, and discussed their differences, loudly and firmly, at considerable length. It was surprising, to me at least, that they were able to maintain their level of invective and their volume for as long as they did. The cashiers and the other customers and I were dumbstruck. We watched silently, our heads turning from one to the other as if at a tennis match.
The original dispute, precedence at the register, was quickly abandoned as the pair moved on to more pressing issues: the shoes they were wearing, their respective hairstyles, the likelihood that the other had unsightly hair sprouting from her nipples, whether they were paying for their purchases with earned money or welfare benefits, and the nature of the odor emanating from the other’s feminine area. It was very educational. It was a tour-de-force, in fact. I have been in many bars and locker rooms and other male enclaves, and while I will freely admit that men can be crude, there are certain things we will not say about even the most loathsome woman. There in Rite-Aid, on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, I learned that women recognize no such limits.
One was white and one was black, and while this in itself did not create any particular friction, the beautiful multicultural diversity of it all led to a colloquy where all of us learned that each of the combatants lived with a black man. This realization framed what became the ultimate issue in the debate: to wit, whether white women or black women were better equipped to satisfy black men sexually. Jaws dropped in the peanut gallery as we listened to the ladies express their strongly-held views on the subject. While I won’t describe for you the activities that each of them felt was essential (and which a woman of the other color was incapable of providing), I will say this: “being there emotionally” was not one of the activities mentioned. They were talking about other stuff.
And then the party of the first part showed other stuff. Lifting her tee-shirt and cupping her breasts in her hands, she screamed, “AND WHAT ABOUT THESE? YOU CAN’T SHOW YOUR MAN TITTIES LIKE THESE, CAN YOU, BITCH?” And lowering her shirt, she stomped out of the store. Triumphant, I guess.
* I‘ve told this story at parties, and it’s certainly good for a few laughs, but the truth is that I find this kind of behavior vulgar rather than amusing, and I don’t much like the amount of vulgarity I see around me. I don’t listen to Howard Stern and I don’t think there is anything cute about Paris Hilton. I also don’t like movies where angelic, grandmotherly women say bad words for comedic reasons. South Park annoys me. And it makes me sad when I hear kids in junior high school swearing, in loud voices, on a bus or a train. I can be a fuddy-duddy about such things.
There is more of this than there used to be. Now, I know that every generation says the younger generation is going to hell, but I’m not really talking about the younger generation, I’m talking about my own. Certainly, the crudeness has trickled down to kids today, but it started with my peers. All this comes from baby boomers.
This is not an original observation, of course. You can fill a library with everything that has been written about the cultural changes in the 60’s and 70’s and whether they were caused by the JFK assassination or Woodstock or the invention of birth control pills or the spread of nuclear weapons or the international communist conspiracy or Nixon or the Beatles or twenty other things. I don’t know. I don’t have a theory on that. I just know it happened. Something changed. And I don’t think it was altogether a good thing.
I am not simply talking about vulgarity in the public square. That is only the most obvious manifestation of what happened, which was that our shared idea of what constitutes a “good person” changed. At one time, there was only one generally accepted definition. A good person was truthful, respectful of others, loyal to God and family and country, self-reliant and optimistic. All of these virtues are derived from the Bible, of course, but they were not religious values so much as American values, and they developed because it’s simply not possible to separate the American experience from its Judeo-Christian roots.
There are many places in America where these qualities continue to define what is thought of as goodness, and there are many parents who are dedicated to instilling them in their children. What has changed is there is now an alternate definition that dominates the public sphere and our educational system, and it comes directly from the “Me Generation.” Behavior that once would be viewed as disgraceful is excused (or even praised) as being “honest.”
Spouting a string of expletives at a store clerk? “Hey, I gotta be me. I was PISSED!” Flipping off another driver? “Well, I HAD to. That’s how I really felt.” Expressing what one is feeling, or doing what one is tempted to do, is always defensible because it is deemed real and authentic. The real sin, for those in this alternate moral universe, lies in espousing traditional values and then falling short of one’s ideals. This is called (for no apparent reason) “hypocrisy.” So it is that a Republican like Mark Foley can be pilloried for sending flirtatious emails while his successor (Tim Mahoney) is excused for multiple incidents of adultery, sexual harassment, payment of hush money, etc.
But there is more to being a good person under this alternate definition. In addition, a good person is one who believes and promotes certain positions on an array of social issues. Global warming is the result of human activity, gay people should be allowed to marry each other, smoking is wrong, affirmative action is the right thing to do, men and women are exactly the same except for anatomy, abortion is always a woman’s choice, etc. There are many more. These are not political views or scientific conclusions, they are moral absolutes. To those who have rejected our traditional values and adopted the Me Generation ethos, you are a good person if you believe all these things. If you don’t, you’re not simply wrong, you’re evil. (Note: I speak here from personal experience.)
My son was taught this new morality in the public schools he attended, and to his credit, it only persuaded him that most adults are fools. But most kids subjected to this type of indoctrination simply accept it, just as previous generations accepted the values of truthfulness, respect for others, loyalty, and so on. In college, where the stakes are higher, the situation is worse. At universities large and small across this country, students are routinely disciplined for speech protected by the First Amendment if that speech questions affirmative action policies or offends feminist sensibilities. (Browse www.thefire.org for a while if you have any doubts about this aspect of academia.) Lawrence Summers was fired as President of Harvard University solely for suggesting (gently) that differences in scientific achievement between men and women might have something to do with how their brains work. Such wicked thoughts may no longer be spoken in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
And this new ethical system is not an addition to the traditional rules; it is a substitute. What used to be thought of as virtues are gone, or at least are regarded as deeply suspect. Every year Tex was in public school, he was given “contracts” by his teachers that he was required to sign. In these, he typically agreed to “respect the property of others,” “refrain from foul language,” “not cheat on tests or plagiarize material for papers,” and a long list of other rules. When I went to school, the very idea that a student would have to agree to such things would have been preposterous. These were simply the minimum requirements of civilized behavior, and we all knew what would happen if you swore at a teacher or cheated on a test. Students broke the rules, of course, but no one questioned their underlying ethical basis. Now, however, for teachers and principals, there is a sense that moral condemnation for behavior is wrong, and that passing judgment on another’s actions can never be justified. We’re all flawed, of course, so who are we to demand adherence to some arbitrary code of proper behavior? Perhaps Johnny has a disability of some kind. Or maybe his cultural heritage is such that certain expectations are unfair.
Students get the message, or the lack of one. Over the past few years, there has been much in the news about file-sharing, piracy of copyrighted music, movies and the like. If you talk to an 18-year-old about this, as I have, you are likely to find he does not understand there could be any moral issue involved. “It’s there on the internet, so I take it.” The idea it can be viewed as theft is met not with disagreement, but with a blank stare. “But it’s just a big corporation,” is another explanation, shifting the focus to the identity of the victim (“big corporations are evil” is another moral absolute), and away from any responsibility for one’s actions. The belief that big corporations are evil makes you a good person, and once you’re a good person, it doesn’t matter what you do.
For their baby boomer parents too, the rules have changed, and to illustrate this, I’ll give one example. A recent study found that when parents are asked whether they would rather their child were caught smoking a cigarette or cheating on a test, a large majority of them answer they would rather their child be caught cheating. Perhaps you would agree with them, and that’s fine. My point here is simply that American morality has changed. When I was a teenager, my parents and every parent I knew would have answered this question differently. Today, smoking is a serious moral lapse, but bearing false witness would be called merely a “behavioral issue.”
All of which brings us to the American presidency, which used to be held by men whose personal lives were probably never beyond reproach, but who respected the office and at least tried to project the image of rectitude and honesty that was expected of them. And when they failed, they were held to account. When Nixon lied, it mattered. When Jimmy Carter waffled in the face of an aggressive bunny rabbit, he was mocked. Reagan, no matter what you thought of his politics, was a courtly gent in public, and his foes gave him credit for it. Even Lyndon Johnson, a very coarse and unsophisticated man, did his best to project himself as a Southern gentleman.
And then came Bill Clinton, our first Boomer president, and none of that old, tired morality was relevant anymore. When he lied, it didn’t matter. Investigating women he had harassed or toyed with, and then releasing disparaging information about them to the press---well, that didn’t matter either. That was simply his personal behavior, and according to Boomer morality, it is wrong to judge someone on that basis. That’s the old morality, you see. That’s what the bible-thumpers do. The only thing that matters is whether he believes the right things, and like all libertines, Clinton was a staunch supporter of abortion-on-demand, so he was OK. And thus it was that NOW and other feminists rallied to his support, even as foreign political cartoonists depicted him strutting pantless, waggling his penis at cheering crowds, with discarded women littering the street in his wake.
I found this disturbing. I disapproved, and it had nothing to do with Clinton’s politics. That was a separate issue. And now we are faced with the possibility that Barack Obama, a far nastier, far cruder man, will be elected president. And again his personal behavior won’t matter, because Obama believes all the “right things.”
No one in the media has connected the dots on Obama’s personality (or on anything else about him, for that matter), so that’s what I’m going to do. This is my November 2nd pre-election special report for all my friends and relatives who are planning to vote for Obama on Tuesday. I want you to reconsider.
*For me, the first red flag was the bizarre announcement of his choice for vice president. A text message to his supporters at 3 A.M.? “Why?” asked the dimmer reporters who didn’t get the nasty little joke behind it. This was a 3 A.M. phone call that Hillary would NOT receive. Get it? Pretty clever, huh? It was a smarmy little shot at the woman who fought him tooth-and-nail (but fairly) throughout the primaries, and whom he had come to hate for her failure to concede defeat. Like all of Obama’s meanest digs, it was completely unnecessary and completely deniable. “A shot at Hillary? Who, me?” And as always, there is a wink and a nod to the other smart kids in the class.
There are women who will not vote for Obama because of his treatment of Hillary (or rather, his campaign’s treatment---it’s never Obama himself). And while I am not a Hillary fan or terribly sympathetic to feminist sensibilities, the misogyny on display has been of the crudest possible nature. For months, Hillary endured the “Bros Before Hos” crowd, heckling her in state after state. No one claims that Obama organized this activity, but neither did he condemn it. Always, he can disclaim responsibility, but his campaign set a tone where this sort of insulting behavior was acceptable. You may have seen the YouTube video (it’s easy to find) where Obama pauses on stage after making a reference to Hillary, and thoughtfully (with a deadpan expression) scratches his temple with his middle finger. Watch it, and you will remember that kid who sat in the last row in seventh grade and did the same thing, with his head turned slightly so the teacher couldn’t see.
More recently, Sarah Palin was confronted at a rally in Philadelphia by four protesters in tee-shirts proclaiming “SARAH PALIN IS A CUNT.” Again, Barack Obama did not print the shirts, but his reaction to this type of nastiness throughout the campaign suggests he thinks it’s kind of cute.
His “lipstick on a pig” remark also fits the pattern---completely deniable (“Who, me?”), but understood perfectly by everyone on both sides of the aisle. Just as “old” means McCain, “Messiah” means Obama, and “hair plugs” means Biden, “lipstick” means Palin. And everyone knows it. On websites hawking Palin tee-shirts and bumper stickers and such, fully a third of the items make some reference to lipstick. In terms of the campaign, she “owns” the word. Personally, I don’t want a president, regardless of his politics, who will publicly call a woman a pig. Even Bill Clinton wouldn’t do that. He always had his surrogates do it.
And speaking of Bill, his speech at the Democratic Convention made it clear that for Obama, it’s never enough to win, it’s also essential to humiliate those who opposed you. We all know that some bad blood had developed between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama during the primaries, and that was in everyone’s mind as the moment approached for Bill’s speech. He had to deliver one, of course, because he’s a Democratic president, but what kind of speech would it be?
If you saw it, I think you will agree it was a classic Clinton performance---folksy, generous and funny. There was no hint of the bickering that had dogged their relationship. At one point he even compared Barack Obama to himself, and this is the greatest compliment a narcissist like Clinton can pay to another person. He held nothing back in his praise for Obama and the campaign he had waged.
And then the speech ended, to a standing ovation and unrestrained celebration in the hall, and as Clinton left the stage, the Obama campaign, which had orchestrated every detail of the convention, cranked up Robert Palmer singing “Addicted To Love.” See ya, Bill. Thanks for the speech. Sucker.
Our presidents are not saints, and some can probably be said to have crawled to the top over the mangled remains of their vanquished foes. So if Barack Obama is just a misogynist and a vindictive SOB with a 12-year-old sense of humor, well, maybe he’s not the worst human being we’ve ever considered putting in the White House. Maybe, one could argue, this is sometimes what our political system produces.
But it’s worse than that. There’s also George Obama, his half-brother, who lives in a six-by-nine-foot shack in Nairobi, Kenya on a few hundred dollars a year. George is mentioned in “Dreams From My Father,” and Barack is well aware of his situation. On his grand tour of Kenya almost two years ago, Barack saw George, spoke with him for a few minutes, and then moved on to the next photo op. Apparently, they have had no contact since. George lives alone, struggling to survive, and dreams of learning to repair cars at a technical school, but the course costs about three hundred dollars, a sum he could never hope to raise. Barack Obama, of course, is a multi-millionaire.
Reading about George, I found myself wondering what I would do if I had a half-brother in George Obama’s situation. I am not a rich man, but it would take almost nothing to help this desperately poor man in a significant, even life-changing, way.
What would you do? Suppose you were separated as children and you didn’t really know the guy, but he was your blood and you could lift him out of squalor and give him a chance, at a cost you would never even notice. Wouldn’t you find some way to send him a few bucks? Wouldn’t you try to help? Wouldn’t you do something? Of course you would. Any decent human being would. But Barack Obama does not.
So yes, there’s the middle finger scratching the temple and there are the childish jokes and there’s the sickening joy he takes in revenge, and these are bad things, but they are not the worst thing about Barack Obama. The worst thing is that he has not lifted a finger to help George Obama when it would cost him nothing to do so. Barack is cold. Barack is ice. There is nothing inside of him.
Copyright 2008 Michael Kubacki
November 2, 2008
Then the situation deteriorated.
They didn’t know each other, and they were both young and strongly built. There never seemed to be any danger the pair would actually grapple, but they stood about fifteen feet apart, arms akimbo, and discussed their differences, loudly and firmly, at considerable length. It was surprising, to me at least, that they were able to maintain their level of invective and their volume for as long as they did. The cashiers and the other customers and I were dumbstruck. We watched silently, our heads turning from one to the other as if at a tennis match.
The original dispute, precedence at the register, was quickly abandoned as the pair moved on to more pressing issues: the shoes they were wearing, their respective hairstyles, the likelihood that the other had unsightly hair sprouting from her nipples, whether they were paying for their purchases with earned money or welfare benefits, and the nature of the odor emanating from the other’s feminine area. It was very educational. It was a tour-de-force, in fact. I have been in many bars and locker rooms and other male enclaves, and while I will freely admit that men can be crude, there are certain things we will not say about even the most loathsome woman. There in Rite-Aid, on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, I learned that women recognize no such limits.
One was white and one was black, and while this in itself did not create any particular friction, the beautiful multicultural diversity of it all led to a colloquy where all of us learned that each of the combatants lived with a black man. This realization framed what became the ultimate issue in the debate: to wit, whether white women or black women were better equipped to satisfy black men sexually. Jaws dropped in the peanut gallery as we listened to the ladies express their strongly-held views on the subject. While I won’t describe for you the activities that each of them felt was essential (and which a woman of the other color was incapable of providing), I will say this: “being there emotionally” was not one of the activities mentioned. They were talking about other stuff.
And then the party of the first part showed other stuff. Lifting her tee-shirt and cupping her breasts in her hands, she screamed, “AND WHAT ABOUT THESE? YOU CAN’T SHOW YOUR MAN TITTIES LIKE THESE, CAN YOU, BITCH?” And lowering her shirt, she stomped out of the store. Triumphant, I guess.
* I‘ve told this story at parties, and it’s certainly good for a few laughs, but the truth is that I find this kind of behavior vulgar rather than amusing, and I don’t much like the amount of vulgarity I see around me. I don’t listen to Howard Stern and I don’t think there is anything cute about Paris Hilton. I also don’t like movies where angelic, grandmotherly women say bad words for comedic reasons. South Park annoys me. And it makes me sad when I hear kids in junior high school swearing, in loud voices, on a bus or a train. I can be a fuddy-duddy about such things.
There is more of this than there used to be. Now, I know that every generation says the younger generation is going to hell, but I’m not really talking about the younger generation, I’m talking about my own. Certainly, the crudeness has trickled down to kids today, but it started with my peers. All this comes from baby boomers.
This is not an original observation, of course. You can fill a library with everything that has been written about the cultural changes in the 60’s and 70’s and whether they were caused by the JFK assassination or Woodstock or the invention of birth control pills or the spread of nuclear weapons or the international communist conspiracy or Nixon or the Beatles or twenty other things. I don’t know. I don’t have a theory on that. I just know it happened. Something changed. And I don’t think it was altogether a good thing.
I am not simply talking about vulgarity in the public square. That is only the most obvious manifestation of what happened, which was that our shared idea of what constitutes a “good person” changed. At one time, there was only one generally accepted definition. A good person was truthful, respectful of others, loyal to God and family and country, self-reliant and optimistic. All of these virtues are derived from the Bible, of course, but they were not religious values so much as American values, and they developed because it’s simply not possible to separate the American experience from its Judeo-Christian roots.
There are many places in America where these qualities continue to define what is thought of as goodness, and there are many parents who are dedicated to instilling them in their children. What has changed is there is now an alternate definition that dominates the public sphere and our educational system, and it comes directly from the “Me Generation.” Behavior that once would be viewed as disgraceful is excused (or even praised) as being “honest.”
Spouting a string of expletives at a store clerk? “Hey, I gotta be me. I was PISSED!” Flipping off another driver? “Well, I HAD to. That’s how I really felt.” Expressing what one is feeling, or doing what one is tempted to do, is always defensible because it is deemed real and authentic. The real sin, for those in this alternate moral universe, lies in espousing traditional values and then falling short of one’s ideals. This is called (for no apparent reason) “hypocrisy.” So it is that a Republican like Mark Foley can be pilloried for sending flirtatious emails while his successor (Tim Mahoney) is excused for multiple incidents of adultery, sexual harassment, payment of hush money, etc.
But there is more to being a good person under this alternate definition. In addition, a good person is one who believes and promotes certain positions on an array of social issues. Global warming is the result of human activity, gay people should be allowed to marry each other, smoking is wrong, affirmative action is the right thing to do, men and women are exactly the same except for anatomy, abortion is always a woman’s choice, etc. There are many more. These are not political views or scientific conclusions, they are moral absolutes. To those who have rejected our traditional values and adopted the Me Generation ethos, you are a good person if you believe all these things. If you don’t, you’re not simply wrong, you’re evil. (Note: I speak here from personal experience.)
My son was taught this new morality in the public schools he attended, and to his credit, it only persuaded him that most adults are fools. But most kids subjected to this type of indoctrination simply accept it, just as previous generations accepted the values of truthfulness, respect for others, loyalty, and so on. In college, where the stakes are higher, the situation is worse. At universities large and small across this country, students are routinely disciplined for speech protected by the First Amendment if that speech questions affirmative action policies or offends feminist sensibilities. (Browse www.thefire.org for a while if you have any doubts about this aspect of academia.) Lawrence Summers was fired as President of Harvard University solely for suggesting (gently) that differences in scientific achievement between men and women might have something to do with how their brains work. Such wicked thoughts may no longer be spoken in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
And this new ethical system is not an addition to the traditional rules; it is a substitute. What used to be thought of as virtues are gone, or at least are regarded as deeply suspect. Every year Tex was in public school, he was given “contracts” by his teachers that he was required to sign. In these, he typically agreed to “respect the property of others,” “refrain from foul language,” “not cheat on tests or plagiarize material for papers,” and a long list of other rules. When I went to school, the very idea that a student would have to agree to such things would have been preposterous. These were simply the minimum requirements of civilized behavior, and we all knew what would happen if you swore at a teacher or cheated on a test. Students broke the rules, of course, but no one questioned their underlying ethical basis. Now, however, for teachers and principals, there is a sense that moral condemnation for behavior is wrong, and that passing judgment on another’s actions can never be justified. We’re all flawed, of course, so who are we to demand adherence to some arbitrary code of proper behavior? Perhaps Johnny has a disability of some kind. Or maybe his cultural heritage is such that certain expectations are unfair.
Students get the message, or the lack of one. Over the past few years, there has been much in the news about file-sharing, piracy of copyrighted music, movies and the like. If you talk to an 18-year-old about this, as I have, you are likely to find he does not understand there could be any moral issue involved. “It’s there on the internet, so I take it.” The idea it can be viewed as theft is met not with disagreement, but with a blank stare. “But it’s just a big corporation,” is another explanation, shifting the focus to the identity of the victim (“big corporations are evil” is another moral absolute), and away from any responsibility for one’s actions. The belief that big corporations are evil makes you a good person, and once you’re a good person, it doesn’t matter what you do.
For their baby boomer parents too, the rules have changed, and to illustrate this, I’ll give one example. A recent study found that when parents are asked whether they would rather their child were caught smoking a cigarette or cheating on a test, a large majority of them answer they would rather their child be caught cheating. Perhaps you would agree with them, and that’s fine. My point here is simply that American morality has changed. When I was a teenager, my parents and every parent I knew would have answered this question differently. Today, smoking is a serious moral lapse, but bearing false witness would be called merely a “behavioral issue.”
All of which brings us to the American presidency, which used to be held by men whose personal lives were probably never beyond reproach, but who respected the office and at least tried to project the image of rectitude and honesty that was expected of them. And when they failed, they were held to account. When Nixon lied, it mattered. When Jimmy Carter waffled in the face of an aggressive bunny rabbit, he was mocked. Reagan, no matter what you thought of his politics, was a courtly gent in public, and his foes gave him credit for it. Even Lyndon Johnson, a very coarse and unsophisticated man, did his best to project himself as a Southern gentleman.
And then came Bill Clinton, our first Boomer president, and none of that old, tired morality was relevant anymore. When he lied, it didn’t matter. Investigating women he had harassed or toyed with, and then releasing disparaging information about them to the press---well, that didn’t matter either. That was simply his personal behavior, and according to Boomer morality, it is wrong to judge someone on that basis. That’s the old morality, you see. That’s what the bible-thumpers do. The only thing that matters is whether he believes the right things, and like all libertines, Clinton was a staunch supporter of abortion-on-demand, so he was OK. And thus it was that NOW and other feminists rallied to his support, even as foreign political cartoonists depicted him strutting pantless, waggling his penis at cheering crowds, with discarded women littering the street in his wake.
I found this disturbing. I disapproved, and it had nothing to do with Clinton’s politics. That was a separate issue. And now we are faced with the possibility that Barack Obama, a far nastier, far cruder man, will be elected president. And again his personal behavior won’t matter, because Obama believes all the “right things.”
No one in the media has connected the dots on Obama’s personality (or on anything else about him, for that matter), so that’s what I’m going to do. This is my November 2nd pre-election special report for all my friends and relatives who are planning to vote for Obama on Tuesday. I want you to reconsider.
*For me, the first red flag was the bizarre announcement of his choice for vice president. A text message to his supporters at 3 A.M.? “Why?” asked the dimmer reporters who didn’t get the nasty little joke behind it. This was a 3 A.M. phone call that Hillary would NOT receive. Get it? Pretty clever, huh? It was a smarmy little shot at the woman who fought him tooth-and-nail (but fairly) throughout the primaries, and whom he had come to hate for her failure to concede defeat. Like all of Obama’s meanest digs, it was completely unnecessary and completely deniable. “A shot at Hillary? Who, me?” And as always, there is a wink and a nod to the other smart kids in the class.
There are women who will not vote for Obama because of his treatment of Hillary (or rather, his campaign’s treatment---it’s never Obama himself). And while I am not a Hillary fan or terribly sympathetic to feminist sensibilities, the misogyny on display has been of the crudest possible nature. For months, Hillary endured the “Bros Before Hos” crowd, heckling her in state after state. No one claims that Obama organized this activity, but neither did he condemn it. Always, he can disclaim responsibility, but his campaign set a tone where this sort of insulting behavior was acceptable. You may have seen the YouTube video (it’s easy to find) where Obama pauses on stage after making a reference to Hillary, and thoughtfully (with a deadpan expression) scratches his temple with his middle finger. Watch it, and you will remember that kid who sat in the last row in seventh grade and did the same thing, with his head turned slightly so the teacher couldn’t see.
More recently, Sarah Palin was confronted at a rally in Philadelphia by four protesters in tee-shirts proclaiming “SARAH PALIN IS A CUNT.” Again, Barack Obama did not print the shirts, but his reaction to this type of nastiness throughout the campaign suggests he thinks it’s kind of cute.
His “lipstick on a pig” remark also fits the pattern---completely deniable (“Who, me?”), but understood perfectly by everyone on both sides of the aisle. Just as “old” means McCain, “Messiah” means Obama, and “hair plugs” means Biden, “lipstick” means Palin. And everyone knows it. On websites hawking Palin tee-shirts and bumper stickers and such, fully a third of the items make some reference to lipstick. In terms of the campaign, she “owns” the word. Personally, I don’t want a president, regardless of his politics, who will publicly call a woman a pig. Even Bill Clinton wouldn’t do that. He always had his surrogates do it.
And speaking of Bill, his speech at the Democratic Convention made it clear that for Obama, it’s never enough to win, it’s also essential to humiliate those who opposed you. We all know that some bad blood had developed between Bill Clinton and Barack Obama during the primaries, and that was in everyone’s mind as the moment approached for Bill’s speech. He had to deliver one, of course, because he’s a Democratic president, but what kind of speech would it be?
If you saw it, I think you will agree it was a classic Clinton performance---folksy, generous and funny. There was no hint of the bickering that had dogged their relationship. At one point he even compared Barack Obama to himself, and this is the greatest compliment a narcissist like Clinton can pay to another person. He held nothing back in his praise for Obama and the campaign he had waged.
And then the speech ended, to a standing ovation and unrestrained celebration in the hall, and as Clinton left the stage, the Obama campaign, which had orchestrated every detail of the convention, cranked up Robert Palmer singing “Addicted To Love.” See ya, Bill. Thanks for the speech. Sucker.
Our presidents are not saints, and some can probably be said to have crawled to the top over the mangled remains of their vanquished foes. So if Barack Obama is just a misogynist and a vindictive SOB with a 12-year-old sense of humor, well, maybe he’s not the worst human being we’ve ever considered putting in the White House. Maybe, one could argue, this is sometimes what our political system produces.
But it’s worse than that. There’s also George Obama, his half-brother, who lives in a six-by-nine-foot shack in Nairobi, Kenya on a few hundred dollars a year. George is mentioned in “Dreams From My Father,” and Barack is well aware of his situation. On his grand tour of Kenya almost two years ago, Barack saw George, spoke with him for a few minutes, and then moved on to the next photo op. Apparently, they have had no contact since. George lives alone, struggling to survive, and dreams of learning to repair cars at a technical school, but the course costs about three hundred dollars, a sum he could never hope to raise. Barack Obama, of course, is a multi-millionaire.
Reading about George, I found myself wondering what I would do if I had a half-brother in George Obama’s situation. I am not a rich man, but it would take almost nothing to help this desperately poor man in a significant, even life-changing, way.
What would you do? Suppose you were separated as children and you didn’t really know the guy, but he was your blood and you could lift him out of squalor and give him a chance, at a cost you would never even notice. Wouldn’t you find some way to send him a few bucks? Wouldn’t you try to help? Wouldn’t you do something? Of course you would. Any decent human being would. But Barack Obama does not.
So yes, there’s the middle finger scratching the temple and there are the childish jokes and there’s the sickening joy he takes in revenge, and these are bad things, but they are not the worst thing about Barack Obama. The worst thing is that he has not lifted a finger to help George Obama when it would cost him nothing to do so. Barack is cold. Barack is ice. There is nothing inside of him.
Copyright 2008 Michael Kubacki
November 2, 2008
Thursday, March 20, 2008
THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
Back when there were two sets of primaries, I would sometimes ask my Democratic pals whether they wished sometimes that their candidates would argue with each other about matters of substance, since the contrast between the primaries, Republican and Democrat, was so stark.
On the Republican side, you had pro-life candidates and pro-choice, pro-war and anti-war, pro-Israel and pro-Arab. You had global warming alarmists and global warming skeptics. You had a governor (Romney) who had set up a state-run healthcare system and you had others who wanted the government completely out of the health business. You had Fair-taxers, flat-taxers, no-taxers and John McCain. You had guys who wanted a border fence with snarling dogs and guys who wanted to give them all drivers licenses and margaritas.
On the other side, they never seemed able to muster much of an argument about anything. National health care? Mandatory! Raise taxes? Of course! Lose the war? Absolutely! There were nuances, I suppose (some of which may have been lost on me), but there was no real disagreement in any of their stated positions on major issues and there have never been any debates about policy.
And once in a while, one of my Democratic pals would agree that it might be better, or at least more interesting, if one of their candidates would propose a different idea about abortion or affirmative action or gay marriage or taxes or terrorism or something. More common, however, was the view that the uniformity of opinion among Democrats was actually a wonderful thing. We're united, you see. We don't have to argue about these things. We all agree on what the country needs.
Of course, one can't help but wonder what Joe Lieberman or Zell Miller thinks of this supposed unity, and I also have a feeling I could find a Democrat or two who might have some reservations about tax increases or abortion or banning guns. But whether you call it a glorious unity or suppression of dissent, the absence of policy disputes created a problem far more serious than boring debates. It created a situation where the only basis on which Democrats can pick a candidate is identity politics.
And that is what has happened to the Democratic race, which has become a death spiral of race and gender and ethnic groupings in which neither side has the juice to kill off the other. Hillary's supporters are determined, and Obama's minions are not backing down either. And since the only disagreements between the two have been purely superficial ("I'm for change!" "No, I'm for real change!"), there is no rational basis on which a Hillary supporter can be persuaded to switch to Obama, or vice versa.
It's an argument no one can win because there has never been an argument. All that's ever happened is a sorting out of skin colors and private parts and income levels and religions. And it continues. You there, you with the dark complexion---over here, please. And you with the vagina and the sub-75K income---this way. Bitter union members with guns? Step over here. And you Jewish folks---sorry we have to ask, but are you the sort of Jews who go to temple every week or are you the kind who eat cheeseburgers on Yom Kippur? Because if you're the first kind, we're going to put you in Hillary's stack, but if you're the second, you go to Obama.
For those of us who think it's morally wrong to judge people on the basis of their skin color or their gonads, the spectacle is somewhat disgusting.
Still, somebody has to win, and it looks like it will be Obama, though how and when this will occur is still anybody's guess. His black/leftie/academic mojo seems a shade more potent than her female/union/take-your-vitamins brand. Also, of course, should he be denied, the spectre of rampaging black Democrats outside the convention in Denver is genuinely chilling. By contrast, when Hillary is finally dragged from the stage, any vision involving legions of outraged Geraldine Ferraros laying waste to a Starbucks is more difficult to conjure.
And so they slog on, slowly, toward Obama's seemingly inevitable nomination. And this inevitability too is a product of the straightjacket of race and gender and ethnicity in which the Democratic Party has voluntarily encased itself. Obama's candidacy has never been based in a political vision (since all the other candidates had the same vision), but rather on who he is and, by extension, who his supporters are. This means that ditching him now, even though his vulnerabilities in November have become apparent, would be more than a political disappointment for his minions, it would be a personal affront. It would be---RACISM!!! And we can't have that sort of thing in the Democratic Party, can we?
So it is, in this most Democratic of all election years, that the party is poised to nominate one of the very few Democrats who is capable of losing to the blathering mess that is John McCain. With six months left in this most supernatural of presidential elections, I don't presume to know the result. But looking at the map, it's hard to fathom where Obama is going to find 270 electoral votes.
Start with West Virginia, where Obama was shellacked in the recent primary. The last Democratic president who lost West Virginia in the general election was named Woodrow Wilson. It's almost impossible for a Democrat to be elected president without West Virginia, and Obama can't win there.
And the West Virginia problem is bigger than West Virginia, of course. Bitter, gun-totin', church-goin' Democrats can also be found in abundance in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Kentucky, all of which Obama lost and all of which are critical to a Democratic victory. (Kentucky loved Bill Clinton, by the way; they hate Obama.)
And then there's Florida, another critical state, which Obama lost handily in a record-turnout, perfectly fair primary that doesn't count. Jewish voters are deeply suspicious of a guy with links to Farrakhan (via Rev. Wright). Obama's desire to sit down for a chin-wag with Raoul Castro is not a popular position in Florida either.
In a general election, Obama is virtually certain to win New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, D.C., Illinois, Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii. That's 157 of the 270 he needs. Kerry also won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, Vermont, Delaware, Maryland and Maine, and many of these are likely to remain in the Democratic column. But Kerry lost. Not only must Obama retain all the states Kerry won (and places like Pennsylvania and Michigan won't be easy), he must expand the base elsewhere. As more is learned about his background, however, the trend seems to be heading in the opposite direction.
But Obama may recover. And McCain can blow it (as he, at times, seems determined to do). I have little faith in election predictions at this point, including my own. My point is that the politicizing of group identity is cancer for our democracy, and it's been a cancer for the Democratic Party. It's the sort of factionalism the founding fathers did everything in their power to prevent, and the Democratic Party is a troubling example of how far this destructive process has gone. When months of primaries and televised "debates" are designed solely to divvy up the electorate into manageable little demographic cells and sort them into camps, what is left of the democratic process where free citizens weigh the arguments of the candidates on the issues of the day? Where are the hard questions from the peanut gallery? Where are the hecklers? Where is the point-counterpoint of finely-honed rhetoric and argument?
There used to be Democrats who favored a strong national defense. There used to be Democrats who had doubts about abortion. Believe it or not, there used to be Democrats who thought cutting taxes was sometimes a good idea. They tended to lose their arguments with other Democrats, but they existed, and they created a playing field on which important political questions could be discussed. And now they're gone, lost in the obsession with race and gender and class and religion and ethnicity, lost in the enraged cries of racism and sexism. This is not a healthy development, either for the Democratic Party or for America.
Copyright 2008 Michael Kubacki
On the Republican side, you had pro-life candidates and pro-choice, pro-war and anti-war, pro-Israel and pro-Arab. You had global warming alarmists and global warming skeptics. You had a governor (Romney) who had set up a state-run healthcare system and you had others who wanted the government completely out of the health business. You had Fair-taxers, flat-taxers, no-taxers and John McCain. You had guys who wanted a border fence with snarling dogs and guys who wanted to give them all drivers licenses and margaritas.
On the other side, they never seemed able to muster much of an argument about anything. National health care? Mandatory! Raise taxes? Of course! Lose the war? Absolutely! There were nuances, I suppose (some of which may have been lost on me), but there was no real disagreement in any of their stated positions on major issues and there have never been any debates about policy.
And once in a while, one of my Democratic pals would agree that it might be better, or at least more interesting, if one of their candidates would propose a different idea about abortion or affirmative action or gay marriage or taxes or terrorism or something. More common, however, was the view that the uniformity of opinion among Democrats was actually a wonderful thing. We're united, you see. We don't have to argue about these things. We all agree on what the country needs.
Of course, one can't help but wonder what Joe Lieberman or Zell Miller thinks of this supposed unity, and I also have a feeling I could find a Democrat or two who might have some reservations about tax increases or abortion or banning guns. But whether you call it a glorious unity or suppression of dissent, the absence of policy disputes created a problem far more serious than boring debates. It created a situation where the only basis on which Democrats can pick a candidate is identity politics.
And that is what has happened to the Democratic race, which has become a death spiral of race and gender and ethnic groupings in which neither side has the juice to kill off the other. Hillary's supporters are determined, and Obama's minions are not backing down either. And since the only disagreements between the two have been purely superficial ("I'm for change!" "No, I'm for real change!"), there is no rational basis on which a Hillary supporter can be persuaded to switch to Obama, or vice versa.
It's an argument no one can win because there has never been an argument. All that's ever happened is a sorting out of skin colors and private parts and income levels and religions. And it continues. You there, you with the dark complexion---over here, please. And you with the vagina and the sub-75K income---this way. Bitter union members with guns? Step over here. And you Jewish folks---sorry we have to ask, but are you the sort of Jews who go to temple every week or are you the kind who eat cheeseburgers on Yom Kippur? Because if you're the first kind, we're going to put you in Hillary's stack, but if you're the second, you go to Obama.
For those of us who think it's morally wrong to judge people on the basis of their skin color or their gonads, the spectacle is somewhat disgusting.
Still, somebody has to win, and it looks like it will be Obama, though how and when this will occur is still anybody's guess. His black/leftie/academic mojo seems a shade more potent than her female/union/take-your-vitamins brand. Also, of course, should he be denied, the spectre of rampaging black Democrats outside the convention in Denver is genuinely chilling. By contrast, when Hillary is finally dragged from the stage, any vision involving legions of outraged Geraldine Ferraros laying waste to a Starbucks is more difficult to conjure.
And so they slog on, slowly, toward Obama's seemingly inevitable nomination. And this inevitability too is a product of the straightjacket of race and gender and ethnicity in which the Democratic Party has voluntarily encased itself. Obama's candidacy has never been based in a political vision (since all the other candidates had the same vision), but rather on who he is and, by extension, who his supporters are. This means that ditching him now, even though his vulnerabilities in November have become apparent, would be more than a political disappointment for his minions, it would be a personal affront. It would be---RACISM!!! And we can't have that sort of thing in the Democratic Party, can we?
So it is, in this most Democratic of all election years, that the party is poised to nominate one of the very few Democrats who is capable of losing to the blathering mess that is John McCain. With six months left in this most supernatural of presidential elections, I don't presume to know the result. But looking at the map, it's hard to fathom where Obama is going to find 270 electoral votes.
Start with West Virginia, where Obama was shellacked in the recent primary. The last Democratic president who lost West Virginia in the general election was named Woodrow Wilson. It's almost impossible for a Democrat to be elected president without West Virginia, and Obama can't win there.
And the West Virginia problem is bigger than West Virginia, of course. Bitter, gun-totin', church-goin' Democrats can also be found in abundance in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Kentucky, all of which Obama lost and all of which are critical to a Democratic victory. (Kentucky loved Bill Clinton, by the way; they hate Obama.)
And then there's Florida, another critical state, which Obama lost handily in a record-turnout, perfectly fair primary that doesn't count. Jewish voters are deeply suspicious of a guy with links to Farrakhan (via Rev. Wright). Obama's desire to sit down for a chin-wag with Raoul Castro is not a popular position in Florida either.
In a general election, Obama is virtually certain to win New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Rhode Island, D.C., Illinois, Washington, Oregon, California and Hawaii. That's 157 of the 270 he needs. Kerry also won Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan, New Hampshire, Vermont, Delaware, Maryland and Maine, and many of these are likely to remain in the Democratic column. But Kerry lost. Not only must Obama retain all the states Kerry won (and places like Pennsylvania and Michigan won't be easy), he must expand the base elsewhere. As more is learned about his background, however, the trend seems to be heading in the opposite direction.
But Obama may recover. And McCain can blow it (as he, at times, seems determined to do). I have little faith in election predictions at this point, including my own. My point is that the politicizing of group identity is cancer for our democracy, and it's been a cancer for the Democratic Party. It's the sort of factionalism the founding fathers did everything in their power to prevent, and the Democratic Party is a troubling example of how far this destructive process has gone. When months of primaries and televised "debates" are designed solely to divvy up the electorate into manageable little demographic cells and sort them into camps, what is left of the democratic process where free citizens weigh the arguments of the candidates on the issues of the day? Where are the hard questions from the peanut gallery? Where are the hecklers? Where is the point-counterpoint of finely-honed rhetoric and argument?
There used to be Democrats who favored a strong national defense. There used to be Democrats who had doubts about abortion. Believe it or not, there used to be Democrats who thought cutting taxes was sometimes a good idea. They tended to lose their arguments with other Democrats, but they existed, and they created a playing field on which important political questions could be discussed. And now they're gone, lost in the obsession with race and gender and class and religion and ethnicity, lost in the enraged cries of racism and sexism. This is not a healthy development, either for the Democratic Party or for America.
Copyright 2008 Michael Kubacki
Sunday, May 6, 2007
VIRGINIA TECH AND THE MASSACRE
Masterman, where my son goes to school, is a tall and narrow building, five stories high. During the day, all traffic is funneled through one set of doors on the first floor. There are other exits, but they are all on the ground floor, and they could all be easily locked in a minute or so. The entire building is surrounded by concrete, so don’t even think about jumping out a second-story window.
The chief security officer is an elderly gentleman who mumbles. His only weapon is a nightstick he carries on his belt. At 150 pounds or so, he is smaller than some of the students.
His assistant is a middle-aged woman who moves a bit faster than he does, and weighs quite a bit more. A cursory glance at her physique reveals no hint of muscle tone. She appears to be completely unarmed.
For the past six years, every time I have walked through the doors at Masterman, the thought has struck me: this place is a potential slaughterhouse. A single armed maniac, with a little planning and determination, could easily lock down the entire building and, in the space of a few minutes, make us all forget Cho Seung-Hui.
Columbine, Trolley Square, Nickel Mines School, various post offices, and now Virginia Tech---every one of these places was a “gun-free zone.” Every mass killing in recent American history has occurred in a gun-free zone. Before 9-11, airplanes were gun-free zones. That, at least, has changed.
Masterman, of course, is a gun-free zone. On a typical school day, there are over a thousand children and adults in that building, and they would be completely helpless against a murderer. Such a person is not necessarily stupid, or irrational---to them, a gun-free zone is a victim-rich environment where they can go about their business undisturbed. In that sense, a gun-free zone like Masterman acts as a focal point for their fantasies. You never hear about a mass shooting at a gun show or an NRA convention, do you?
I am somewhat bitter about this.
On other occasions, I have written about some of the left-wing foolishness one must come to expect from a public school in Philadelphia. AIDS, we learn, was invented by the US government in order to kill people of color. The only thing white men ever did in America was enslave blacks, oppress women, intern the Japanese, abuse the disabled and beat up homosexuals. Students are taught to cherish their group identity and any attendant sense of victimhood. Etcetera.
That stuff annoys me because of its totalitarian nature. No dissenting voices are permitted. I am a distinct minority, but I am not the only parent who disapproves of their moral and political indoctrination, so the sheer unfairness of it bugs me.
Its effectiveness, however, is doubtful. For Tex, for example, all it does is sharpen his appreciation for how irrational and mean-spirited the extreme left can be. And he is not the only one. I know there are other students who react to the attempts to indoctrinate them by heading in the opposite direction. Teen rebellion being what it is, there will always be those who won’t knuckle under to the party line.
But though Tex and others will survive the indoctrination, keeping him for hours each day in a potential slaughterhouse is another matter. This particular manifestation of fluffy-headed left-wing bias makes me angry because it creates a real physical danger to my son and hundreds of other children. And for what? Because the school administrators think guns are icky? Because guns are “dangerous?” Well, maybe that’s why you need somebody who knows how to use one when a lunatic wants to kill children! No one is suggesting that 12-year-olds carry guns in their backpacks, but what possible reason can there be for the security guards to be helpless? What about the principal? What about the history teacher who was a marine for twenty years? Why can’t he keep a piece in a locked drawer?
Most people view political correctness as quaint, or silly. It’s not. It’s dangerous. Some of the students at Virginia Tech are dead because their campus was a gun-free zone.
Copyright 2007 Michael Kubacki
The chief security officer is an elderly gentleman who mumbles. His only weapon is a nightstick he carries on his belt. At 150 pounds or so, he is smaller than some of the students.
His assistant is a middle-aged woman who moves a bit faster than he does, and weighs quite a bit more. A cursory glance at her physique reveals no hint of muscle tone. She appears to be completely unarmed.
For the past six years, every time I have walked through the doors at Masterman, the thought has struck me: this place is a potential slaughterhouse. A single armed maniac, with a little planning and determination, could easily lock down the entire building and, in the space of a few minutes, make us all forget Cho Seung-Hui.
Columbine, Trolley Square, Nickel Mines School, various post offices, and now Virginia Tech---every one of these places was a “gun-free zone.” Every mass killing in recent American history has occurred in a gun-free zone. Before 9-11, airplanes were gun-free zones. That, at least, has changed.
Masterman, of course, is a gun-free zone. On a typical school day, there are over a thousand children and adults in that building, and they would be completely helpless against a murderer. Such a person is not necessarily stupid, or irrational---to them, a gun-free zone is a victim-rich environment where they can go about their business undisturbed. In that sense, a gun-free zone like Masterman acts as a focal point for their fantasies. You never hear about a mass shooting at a gun show or an NRA convention, do you?
I am somewhat bitter about this.
On other occasions, I have written about some of the left-wing foolishness one must come to expect from a public school in Philadelphia. AIDS, we learn, was invented by the US government in order to kill people of color. The only thing white men ever did in America was enslave blacks, oppress women, intern the Japanese, abuse the disabled and beat up homosexuals. Students are taught to cherish their group identity and any attendant sense of victimhood. Etcetera.
That stuff annoys me because of its totalitarian nature. No dissenting voices are permitted. I am a distinct minority, but I am not the only parent who disapproves of their moral and political indoctrination, so the sheer unfairness of it bugs me.
Its effectiveness, however, is doubtful. For Tex, for example, all it does is sharpen his appreciation for how irrational and mean-spirited the extreme left can be. And he is not the only one. I know there are other students who react to the attempts to indoctrinate them by heading in the opposite direction. Teen rebellion being what it is, there will always be those who won’t knuckle under to the party line.
But though Tex and others will survive the indoctrination, keeping him for hours each day in a potential slaughterhouse is another matter. This particular manifestation of fluffy-headed left-wing bias makes me angry because it creates a real physical danger to my son and hundreds of other children. And for what? Because the school administrators think guns are icky? Because guns are “dangerous?” Well, maybe that’s why you need somebody who knows how to use one when a lunatic wants to kill children! No one is suggesting that 12-year-olds carry guns in their backpacks, but what possible reason can there be for the security guards to be helpless? What about the principal? What about the history teacher who was a marine for twenty years? Why can’t he keep a piece in a locked drawer?
Most people view political correctness as quaint, or silly. It’s not. It’s dangerous. Some of the students at Virginia Tech are dead because their campus was a gun-free zone.
Copyright 2007 Michael Kubacki
Thursday, March 8, 2007
MY FATHER’S WAR STORY
As wars go, my father’s WWII was not the worst. He spent almost all of his time in North Africa and Italy (rather than, say, Iwo Jima), he didn’t kill anybody, and though he was shot at and bombed, he never felt he came seriously close to getting seriously hurt. In addition, as he pointed out more than once, the army was superior to his childhood in this respect: in the army, he always got his chow.
When Italy fell to the Allies in 1944, my old man was there, and he spent the rest of the war in the pacification of a place where a substantial portion of the citizenry was not averse to being pacified. While the de-nazification of Germany took about ten years, the de-fascistification of Italy took about ten minutes. Still, there was work to be done in getting the Germans out of Italy, and Captain Kubacki had to do some of it.
In 1945, when the Germans in Italy had (mostly) been defeated, my father was given a jeep, a lieutenant, two heavily-armed MPs, a strongbox full of money, and a long list of people’s names along with the towns and villages in which these people lived. As the American army had worked its way through the Italian countryside, cleaning out German strongholds, it had taken what it needed from the farmers and townspeople along the way, in each case promising to return with payment at some point in the indefinite (and uncertain) future. It is fair to assume that these promises, to a people who had dealt with the ravages of invading armies for the previous five thousand years or so, were met with a certain skepticism.
Captain Kubacki and his crew would drive into town unannounced, and the Captain would set off to find the mayor or some other nabob, to whom he would explain his mission. “We’re here to pay your people,” my father would say, in his imperfect Italian, “for the sheep and mules and tomatoes and gasoline the American army took last year. Please call everyone together so we can get started.”
The initial response to this, typically, was, “You want to do WHAT?”
Sleepy little Italian towns being what they are, however, people had already started peeking around corners to find out what the Americans were up to, and with entertainment in short supply at the time, there would soon be a crowd gathered in the town square with my father, the lieutenant, the MPs and the strongbox at the center of it. At which point, my father would unfurl his list and call out the first name.
“Vincenzo Massimo!”
All eyes would turn to Vincenzo, who was suddenly on the spot, and with a shrug of the shoulders and a puzzled look, he would approach.
“A mule,” my father would say. The lieutenant would count out some appropriate number of lire and hand the cash to Vincente, who would look at it, hold it up to the sun, wave it in the air for the crowd to see, and return to his pals, who would examine the notes intently.
Meanwhile, Captain Kubacki was calling out the next name: “Luigi Grieco!”
According to my father, the same scenario, with few variations, played out in town after town. In a few minutes, a table would be brought to the square, with comfortable chairs for the captain and the lieutenant. Shortly, a plate of olives would appear on the table, perhaps with a bit of bread and cheese. A few minutes later, a flagon of wine would materialize, along with a young lady whose job it was to ensure the officers’ glasses were never empty. As the soldiers worked their way down to the end of the list for that day, a fiddle or a guitar would be heard somewhere in the distance, and this was a sign that the party was beginning in earnest.
For two months, as their caravan progressed through the countryside, the most difficult part of the job was getting out of town, since it was impossible to accept all the hospitality that was offered. These were people who had nothing, of course, but who invariably insisted on providing my father’s squad with the best beds, the best food, and the best wines.
It’s an irresistible story, and I heard him tell it many times. It’s a war story and an anti-war story at the same time, as well as a tale of American patriotism and values. His favorite aspect of it, the part he seemed to savor in the telling, was the surprise and confusion that greeted their arrival and the realization the American army had actually returned. They were honoring a commitment that literally no one had expected them to honor. Unlike the dozens (or hundreds) of invaders who had come through Italy over the centuries, the Americans were there to make everything right, and pay for what they had taken.
Copyright 2007 Michael Kubacki
When Italy fell to the Allies in 1944, my old man was there, and he spent the rest of the war in the pacification of a place where a substantial portion of the citizenry was not averse to being pacified. While the de-nazification of Germany took about ten years, the de-fascistification of Italy took about ten minutes. Still, there was work to be done in getting the Germans out of Italy, and Captain Kubacki had to do some of it.
In 1945, when the Germans in Italy had (mostly) been defeated, my father was given a jeep, a lieutenant, two heavily-armed MPs, a strongbox full of money, and a long list of people’s names along with the towns and villages in which these people lived. As the American army had worked its way through the Italian countryside, cleaning out German strongholds, it had taken what it needed from the farmers and townspeople along the way, in each case promising to return with payment at some point in the indefinite (and uncertain) future. It is fair to assume that these promises, to a people who had dealt with the ravages of invading armies for the previous five thousand years or so, were met with a certain skepticism.
Captain Kubacki and his crew would drive into town unannounced, and the Captain would set off to find the mayor or some other nabob, to whom he would explain his mission. “We’re here to pay your people,” my father would say, in his imperfect Italian, “for the sheep and mules and tomatoes and gasoline the American army took last year. Please call everyone together so we can get started.”
The initial response to this, typically, was, “You want to do WHAT?”
Sleepy little Italian towns being what they are, however, people had already started peeking around corners to find out what the Americans were up to, and with entertainment in short supply at the time, there would soon be a crowd gathered in the town square with my father, the lieutenant, the MPs and the strongbox at the center of it. At which point, my father would unfurl his list and call out the first name.
“Vincenzo Massimo!”
All eyes would turn to Vincenzo, who was suddenly on the spot, and with a shrug of the shoulders and a puzzled look, he would approach.
“A mule,” my father would say. The lieutenant would count out some appropriate number of lire and hand the cash to Vincente, who would look at it, hold it up to the sun, wave it in the air for the crowd to see, and return to his pals, who would examine the notes intently.
Meanwhile, Captain Kubacki was calling out the next name: “Luigi Grieco!”
According to my father, the same scenario, with few variations, played out in town after town. In a few minutes, a table would be brought to the square, with comfortable chairs for the captain and the lieutenant. Shortly, a plate of olives would appear on the table, perhaps with a bit of bread and cheese. A few minutes later, a flagon of wine would materialize, along with a young lady whose job it was to ensure the officers’ glasses were never empty. As the soldiers worked their way down to the end of the list for that day, a fiddle or a guitar would be heard somewhere in the distance, and this was a sign that the party was beginning in earnest.
For two months, as their caravan progressed through the countryside, the most difficult part of the job was getting out of town, since it was impossible to accept all the hospitality that was offered. These were people who had nothing, of course, but who invariably insisted on providing my father’s squad with the best beds, the best food, and the best wines.
It’s an irresistible story, and I heard him tell it many times. It’s a war story and an anti-war story at the same time, as well as a tale of American patriotism and values. His favorite aspect of it, the part he seemed to savor in the telling, was the surprise and confusion that greeted their arrival and the realization the American army had actually returned. They were honoring a commitment that literally no one had expected them to honor. Unlike the dozens (or hundreds) of invaders who had come through Italy over the centuries, the Americans were there to make everything right, and pay for what they had taken.
Copyright 2007 Michael Kubacki
Friday, October 6, 2006
IN PRAISE OF HATE SPEECH; The Cartoon War and the Heckler’s Veto
A couple years ago, I was sitting on the beach at Rehoboth, talking to a lawyer friend about a First Amendment case he was handling, and apropos of our conversation, I said, “Thank God we live in a country where it’s not a crime to call somebody a nigger.”
He thought about that, and looked at me funny.
“C’mon, Bob,” I said. “Would you want to live in a place where it was illegal to stand in the courtyard at City Hall and yell ‘The first thing we have to do is kill all the Jews.’”
He didn’t answer. He was thinking, as he sometimes does. Then, as luck would have it, a very healthy 20-year-old girl in an abbreviated bathing costume strolled past on her way to the surf, and he seemed to lose interest in my question. My attention may have wandered as well. By the time we were through examining the evidence, my First Amendment question had been forgotten.
But it’s an important question, especially in light of the war breaking out over the Muhammed cartoons. Should it be a crime to use the word “nigger,” or demand that Jews be killed? In other words, should “hate speech” be protected by the First Amendment?
Most Americans understand that the First Amendment makes us different from the rest of the world, even from other democracies with traditions of free speech and freedom of the press. One obvious difference is that free speech in America is rooted in our constitution, which trumps all other law. The British Parliament could pass a law tomorrow that would put all newspapers under government control. If the US Congress did such a thing, however, the law would be nullified as unconstitutional by the first (and every subsequent) federal judge to review it.
Nationalizing the press is an extreme example, of course, and there is no chance the British Parliament is going to do it. In a democracy lacking an overarching body of law like the First Amendment, however, the boundaries of free speech are always subject to political fashion and the whim of the legislature. And in fact, elected bodies in other countries regularly nibble away at speech rights in ways our constitution and our Supreme Court do not permit. Free speech law, as outlined by our courts over the last two hundred years, is marked by bright lines that neither Congress nor the states can cross. One of these bright lines of particular significance to hate speech laws (and the Danish cartoon war), is the “heckler’s veto,” a legal doctrine unique to the United States.
In the case of Terminiello v. Chicago, in 1949, a lecturer was arrested for a breach of the peace when an angry crowd gathered outside the auditorium where he was speaking. The trial judge told the jury that under a Chicago ordinance, it could convict the speaker if he had engaged in speech that “stirs the public to anger, invites dispute, brings about a condition of unrest or creates a disturbance….” On review, the US Supreme Court reversed the conviction and ruled the ordinance unconstitutional. Speech is protected, the Court wrote, BECAUSE “it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.”
Speech may legally be restricted for many reasons. You can’t hold an anti-war rally on Broad Street on January 1, when the mummers are parading, because that would be an “unreasonable time and place.” Some speech content (i.e., kiddie porn, national security secrets) is not only unprotected, it is actually criminal. Under Terminiello, however, the only reason speech rights may not be limited is that the speech will offend people, or even enrage them. To limit offensive speech because it offends is to give the heckler a veto over speech that annoys him. In fact, it encourages the heckler to become violent and breach the peace, because then the speaker will be punished. The rule of Terminiello is that we punish the violent heckler, but we do not punish the speaker.
The reasoning of the Terminiello case is that once you start banning speech because it offends, eventually you grant control of all discourse to the most sensitive, irrational and violent elements in society. Opening this door creates a “slippery slope” to repression. Though you begin by punishing nazis and racists, you move swiftly to jailing artists like Andres Serrano (“Piss Christ”) and newspaper editors who publish Muhammed cartoons. Ultimately, you lock up the guy who says, “Ya know, women can do a lot of things, but I still think the best firefighters are men.”
Though Terminiello is settled law (a “super-precedent,” as Arlen Specter would say), the rule of the “heckler’s veto” is not universally loved or respected, and there are plenty of folks who would ban what they view as “hate speech” if they could get away with it.
In the last twenty-five years, over 90% of colleges and universities in the United States have enacted speech codes or sexual harassment codes that ban “offensive” speech or speech that “demeans, provokes or subordinates” any person. A private university like Harvard or Bob Jones may legally do such a thing, but a public university like Temple or Penn State or Michigan is legally viewed as an arm of the government and is subject to the First Amendment.
When a student runs afoul of these rules with speech deemed “offensive” or “harassing” by college administrators, litigation often ensues. Currently, there are lawsuits all over the country. In fact, there is now a non-profit organization, the Foundation For Individual Rights In Education (“FIRE”), that provides legal assistance to students or faculty members who are punished for constitutionally-protected speech. FIRE never loses these cases.
Dozens of examples, including those that don’t reach the litigation stage, can be found at FIRE’s website, www.thefire.org. Here are a few:
***Cal-Poly, 2002. Student Steven Hinkle posted a flier in the campus Multicultural Center advertising a College-Republican-sponsored speech by Mason Weaver, author of It’s OK To Leave The Plantation. The flier displayed only the title of the book, the time and place of the event, and a picture of the author, an African-American. After some black students objected the poster was offensive, Hinkle, following a seven-hour hearing before the Cal-Poly Judicial Affairs Office, was ordered to write letters of apology to the offended students or face “severe penalties.”
***Central Michigan U, 2001. In October 2001, an administrator ordered a number of students to remove various patriotic displays (American flags, eagles, etc.) from their dormitory because the displays were offensive.
***Holy Cross, 2001. In October 2001, the chairman of the sociology department ordered a secretary’s American flag display removed from the office. The flag was in memory of her friend Todd Beamer, who fought and died on United flight 93 over Pennsylvania on 9-11.
***San Diego State, 2001. In September 2001, Zewdalem Kebede witnessed a group of Saudi Arabian students loudly expressing their delight at the success of the terrorist attacks. Kebede spoke to them in Arabic, condemning their opinions and bad taste. When the students complained, Kebede was subjected to a disciplinary hearing and issued a formal “letter of admonishment” in which he was told to avoid similar confrontations or face “severe disciplinary measures.”
***William Patterson U, 2005. Jihad Daniel, a Muslim student and employee of the college, received a mass email from Professor Arlene Scala promoting a showing of a film described as “a lesbian relationship story.” He replied privately to the professor, asking that he not be sent any mail about “Connie and Sally” or “Adam and Steve” because his religion viewed these relationships as “perversions.” Mr. Daniel received an official letter of reprimand in his employment file noting his violation of sexual harassment regulations.
***U of New Hampshire, 2004. Timothy Garneau posted fliers in the elevators of his dormitory suggesting that women could lose the “freshman 15” (weight gained the first year of college) by taking the stairs. Charged with “acts of dishonesty, violation of affirmative action policy and harassment,” Garneau was expelled from student housing, given disciplinary probation, required to meet with a psychological counselor and write a 3000-word essay about it, and further required to submit a letter of apology to the student newspaper.
***U of Cal-Irvine, 2004. Members of the College Republicans staged an Affirmative Action Bake Sale to dramatize the unfairness of affirmative action programs. Prices for donuts were based on the race and sex of the consumer, with white males paying a dollar, Hispanics 75 cents, and blacks 50 cents. A spirited discussion ensued, until the Dean of Students stopped the sale, claiming it violated student regulations on discrimination. College Republican groups have set up these sales at universities around the country, and were also shut down at Illinois State and SMU. At DePaul, the students were charged with violating the school’s harassment policy.
Another tactic used by college administrations to silence views they dislike is to allow, or even encourage, radical students to do the silencing by means of vandalism, theft, or other violence. At the University of Colorado, for example, an affirmative action bake sale ended when, with campus police in attendance, counter-demonstrators were permitted to rip down signs and overturn tables, without opposition or consequences.
In 2005, at Washington State University, student playwright Chris Lee produced his play, “Passion Of The Musical,” and advertised it widely as “offensive or inflammatory to all audiences.” During one performance, a group of forty protesters repeatedly stood up, shouted they were offended, and threatened audience members and the cast. When Lee finally stopped the play and asked campus security to remove the protesters, they refused his request. Evidence later surfaced that the Washington State Office For Campus Involvement had bought forty tickets for the protesters with university funds and had helped organize the disruption.
A common tactic for radical students is to steal the entire press run of a student newspaper containing “offensive” (i.e., politically conservative) material. Typically, the thieves are never punished. In fact, the theft is sometimes defended by administrators and professors as itself being an exercise of free speech. Again, these incidents are found across the country at a wide variety of institutions. A few that garnered significant press coverage were at Berkeley, UNC-Wilmington, U Mass, Loyola Marymount, Boston College, Morehead State, and Oregon State. FIRE has received reports on hundreds of such events.
It may be tempting to attribute these cases to a few ignorant zealots who happen to be college administrators, but in fact, they happen regularly across the country, in small schools and large, in red states and blue. Also, even when the light is shone on the suppression of speech at an institution supposedly dedicated to intellectual freedom, schools rarely back down. They litigate. They fight these complaints, spending many thousands on lawyers and thousands more on settlements and judgments. But even after they lose, the speech codes remain.
Illegal speech codes grew out of a misreading of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, federal laws that prohibit real harassment in the workplace and on campus. Because of this misunderstanding, and because of their own political views, the people who run our universities came to believe they were permitted, or even required, to regulate offensive speech. While it seems unlikely anyone could still believe this, the speech codes are now in place and there is strong support for them on most campuses.
University speech codes illustrate the “slippery slope” in full regalia. Federal laws designed to prevent the most severe, persistent, frightening sort of harassment (the equivalent of “stalking” under state laws), have morphed into an Orwellian system of oppression.
Thus, expressing one’s religious view that homosexuality is immoral becomes a hate crime. Poking fun at affirmative action policies results in disciplinary hearings and punishment. American flags get ripped from dormitory walls a month after 9-11. Once the door is opened to the notion that speech can be banned because someone is offended by it, no speech is safe. All variety of commentary becomes subject to the heckler’s veto.
American universities will eventually get the message that their speech codes are illegal, but in nations without a First Amendment (i.e., everywhere else), and without a Terminiello case, there is no particular reason to tolerate speech the majority deems hateful. And since, as a matter of practical politics, there is no organized constituency in favor of the most offensive speech, it is often banned.
In 1998, an Ontario man was convicted of a hate crime for distributing pamphlets about Islam. The offending pamphlet (truthfully) listed atrocities committed in the name of Allah, and urged the reader to be careful in dealing with Canadian Muslims.
More recent Canadian law has criminalized the public disapproval of homosexuality. In 2001, Hugh Owens placed an ad in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix in which a drawing of two males holding hands was overlaid with a red circle and a diagonal bar. The ad also referenced (but did not quote) four Bible passages that condemn homosexuality. Mr. Owens and the newspaper were fined $4500 under the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code, and the ruling was upheld by the Queen’s Bench, where a Justice Barclay wrote that “the advertisement can objectively be seen as exposing homosexuals to hatred or ridicule.” And under Canadian law, that’s all that matters. In another recent case from Ontario (not a speech case), a printer (a Christian) was fined $5000 for refusing a job printing letterhead for a gay advocacy group.
Hate speech laws are also found throughout Europe.
Shortly after Muslims carried out bomb attacks in London in 2005, a German man printed up toilet paper with the word “Koran” on every sheet, then sent the rolls to TV stations and mosques. He was given a one-year prison sentence, which will be followed by 300 hours of community service. I
In an odd English case, the Mayor of London was brought before the Adjudication Panel For England over a heated exchange he had with a reporter for the Evening Standard, a paper the Mayor despises. The Mayor asked the reporter (a Jew) if he had been a German war criminal and compared him to a concentration camp guard. The result was a four-week suspension for the Mayor, who will also have to pay legal fees of $175,000.
In Sweden, the Rev. Aake Green was sentenced to a month in prison for a sermon denouncing homosexuality as “a cancer on society.” After a yearlong appeal, the conviction was overturned and the pastor remains free, but the prosecution has announced plans for a further appeal, which will include a demand for a longer sentence.
Though the Rev. Green may escape punishment for his remarks from the pulpit, the effect of such laws on speech was apparent in his post-appeal statement to the press. “I’ll go on preaching as usual but I won’t be dedicating so much time to this issue,” he said. (This “chilling effect,” under US law, is why even an unsuccessful attempt to censor speech, or a rarely-enforced speech code, is actionable. On February 22, 2006, the Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit against Penn State over its speech code in which the plaintiff is a student who has never been disciplined by the university for his speech, though others have been.)
The most widespread hate-speech laws are those banning public display of nazi symbols or denial of the holocaust. There are ten such countries in Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Poland.) In addition, there are other countries (e.g., Canada and the U.K.) that do not explicitly ban holocaust denial, but do so under broader laws against inciting racial hatred.
On February 20, 2006, a British historian named David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison by an Austrian court for denying the holocaust in a 1989 publication (in England). The prosecutor is appealing the sentence as too lenient since the 1992 Austrian law provides for a sentence of up to ten years.
There is solid support for hate speech laws, of various kinds, across Europe. In fact, the EU bureaucracy is currently engaged in writing regulations to ban various forms of offensive speech on the internet. It is against this backdrop that the Danish cartoon war erupted.
The protests began with boycotts of Danish dairy products in Arabian countries and quickly progressed to riots, embassy-burning and blood in the streets. As the violence escalated, there were repeated demands that the government of Denmark, and other countries, apologize. And some government officials did, but not the Prime Minister of Denmark. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, though noting that burning a Koran would be a crime in Denmark, claimed the Danish government could do nothing about the cartoons because it did not control the press. In other words, the Danish government had nothing to do with it, so how could they apologize?
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Hitler-wannabe who is now President of Iran, in one of his more rational moments, hit the nail squarely on the noggin: “How can the insulting of the prophet of Muslims worldwide be justified within the framework of press freedom, but investigating the fairy tale holocaust is not?”
And he’s got a point, doesn’t he? In Europe, they’re trying to keep skinheads off the internet, they fine the elected mayor of a great city because he insults a reporter, they lock up a historian because he denied the holocaust in a different country three years before a law was passed saying you can’t deny the holocaust, and they want to put a preacher in jail for quoting Leviticus on Sunday morning. SO WHAT ABOUT US? WE’RE PISSED TOO! WHAT ABOUT OUR DAMN PROPHET??? Now, suddenly, you’re claiming there’s some free speech principle involved? Since when did YOU ever bother about free speech?
The Muslims are correct this time. There is no reasonable basis upon which Denmark or any other European country can stand on principle, because they recognize no such principle. If speech is offensive, it is banned, and speakers go to jail. Putting aside the issue of how much of the rioting is actually government-sponsored, there’s no question that Muslims are genuinely annoyed by the graphic depiction, especially in a negative light, of their prophet, so why aren’t the cartoonists eating out of tin cups? If some kid at Duesseldorf U. put a swastika in his dorm window, the Germans would treat him like Sherman treated Georgia. Once you begin banning offensive speech, you’re going to encounter some sensitive people (like Muslims), and you will have to accommodate them. When you allow the heckler a veto, you may be unpleasantly surprised by how many hecklers there are and how easily they are offended.
Europe’s failure to protect hate speech left an opening for the growing Muslim population there to exploit, and this particular battle in the culture war was over before it started, with Western freedom exposed as an illusion. European governments and journalists had no idea how to respond because they weren’t sure what they believed in, so many governments and newspapers apologized to the Muslim world. What newspaper now will publish words or pictures (even truthful ones) that will enrage the Muslim population? Those that do not censor themselves can expect no protection from the law; in fact, they may themselves be arrested for offending the rabble.
Apart from the freedom that disappears when a people fail to understand the importance of protecting hate speech, the cartoon war illustrates another danger of permitting the heckler a veto. As the Terminiello court pointed out, the peril for society is that the loudest and most violent hecklers will rule.
It may seem polite or civilized or politically-correct to ban speech that may offend one group or another, but this impulse is extremely shortsighted. What happens when groups of “victims” disagree over what speech is offensive? What will happen in Europe, for example, when an imam calls for the silencing of gay advocacy groups because their views are an affront to Allah? Homosexuals are executed in some Muslim countries; what happens when the faithful demand the same in Europe? It is one thing to lock up an elderly small-town Swedish pastor for condemning homosexuality, but would the Europeans do the same to a Muslim preacher who said far worse? An Iranian university just held an academic conference on the “myth” of the holocaust. Suppose someone decided to launch such an event in France?
When conflicts like this arise, the only method of resolving it will be to accede to the wishes of those who are most offended (i.e., the loudest). Since there is no principle involved other than a “right” not to have one’s (subjective) feelings wounded, those with the strongest feelings should prevail. And can anyone doubt that the winners of the rage-fest will be followers of Islam?
America, however, is different. America is better. Here, at least some people understand that if we want any freedom at all, we must accept the possibility we will sometimes be offended by other people’s exercise of it. It’s our law. It’s our tradition. “F*** em if they can’t take a joke” might as well be written in the Constitution. Several years ago, Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” was displayed in a public museum. The sculpture, a statue of Jesus immersed in a plastic case filled with the artist’s own urine, was deeply upsetting to many (perhaps most) people in this very Christian nation, but I remember no one calling for the suppression of this work. The only issue, discussed endlessly on TV and radio and in editorials, was whether artists like Mr. Serrano should receive public funding. Ban Muhammed cartoons? Ban offensive speech? Give me a break. Americans (outside of academia) don’t know how to think like that.
As Europe descends into oppression, we can be thankful that free speech, especially hate speech, survives here. America is still a place where you can say any damn thing you please. Maybe you’ll get punched in the nose for it, and maybe you should get punched in the nose for it, but you won’t get arrested. Or silenced.
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
He thought about that, and looked at me funny.
“C’mon, Bob,” I said. “Would you want to live in a place where it was illegal to stand in the courtyard at City Hall and yell ‘The first thing we have to do is kill all the Jews.’”
He didn’t answer. He was thinking, as he sometimes does. Then, as luck would have it, a very healthy 20-year-old girl in an abbreviated bathing costume strolled past on her way to the surf, and he seemed to lose interest in my question. My attention may have wandered as well. By the time we were through examining the evidence, my First Amendment question had been forgotten.
But it’s an important question, especially in light of the war breaking out over the Muhammed cartoons. Should it be a crime to use the word “nigger,” or demand that Jews be killed? In other words, should “hate speech” be protected by the First Amendment?
Most Americans understand that the First Amendment makes us different from the rest of the world, even from other democracies with traditions of free speech and freedom of the press. One obvious difference is that free speech in America is rooted in our constitution, which trumps all other law. The British Parliament could pass a law tomorrow that would put all newspapers under government control. If the US Congress did such a thing, however, the law would be nullified as unconstitutional by the first (and every subsequent) federal judge to review it.
Nationalizing the press is an extreme example, of course, and there is no chance the British Parliament is going to do it. In a democracy lacking an overarching body of law like the First Amendment, however, the boundaries of free speech are always subject to political fashion and the whim of the legislature. And in fact, elected bodies in other countries regularly nibble away at speech rights in ways our constitution and our Supreme Court do not permit. Free speech law, as outlined by our courts over the last two hundred years, is marked by bright lines that neither Congress nor the states can cross. One of these bright lines of particular significance to hate speech laws (and the Danish cartoon war), is the “heckler’s veto,” a legal doctrine unique to the United States.
In the case of Terminiello v. Chicago, in 1949, a lecturer was arrested for a breach of the peace when an angry crowd gathered outside the auditorium where he was speaking. The trial judge told the jury that under a Chicago ordinance, it could convict the speaker if he had engaged in speech that “stirs the public to anger, invites dispute, brings about a condition of unrest or creates a disturbance….” On review, the US Supreme Court reversed the conviction and ruled the ordinance unconstitutional. Speech is protected, the Court wrote, BECAUSE “it induces a condition of unrest, creates dissatisfaction with conditions as they are, or even stirs people to anger.”
Speech may legally be restricted for many reasons. You can’t hold an anti-war rally on Broad Street on January 1, when the mummers are parading, because that would be an “unreasonable time and place.” Some speech content (i.e., kiddie porn, national security secrets) is not only unprotected, it is actually criminal. Under Terminiello, however, the only reason speech rights may not be limited is that the speech will offend people, or even enrage them. To limit offensive speech because it offends is to give the heckler a veto over speech that annoys him. In fact, it encourages the heckler to become violent and breach the peace, because then the speaker will be punished. The rule of Terminiello is that we punish the violent heckler, but we do not punish the speaker.
The reasoning of the Terminiello case is that once you start banning speech because it offends, eventually you grant control of all discourse to the most sensitive, irrational and violent elements in society. Opening this door creates a “slippery slope” to repression. Though you begin by punishing nazis and racists, you move swiftly to jailing artists like Andres Serrano (“Piss Christ”) and newspaper editors who publish Muhammed cartoons. Ultimately, you lock up the guy who says, “Ya know, women can do a lot of things, but I still think the best firefighters are men.”
Though Terminiello is settled law (a “super-precedent,” as Arlen Specter would say), the rule of the “heckler’s veto” is not universally loved or respected, and there are plenty of folks who would ban what they view as “hate speech” if they could get away with it.
In the last twenty-five years, over 90% of colleges and universities in the United States have enacted speech codes or sexual harassment codes that ban “offensive” speech or speech that “demeans, provokes or subordinates” any person. A private university like Harvard or Bob Jones may legally do such a thing, but a public university like Temple or Penn State or Michigan is legally viewed as an arm of the government and is subject to the First Amendment.
When a student runs afoul of these rules with speech deemed “offensive” or “harassing” by college administrators, litigation often ensues. Currently, there are lawsuits all over the country. In fact, there is now a non-profit organization, the Foundation For Individual Rights In Education (“FIRE”), that provides legal assistance to students or faculty members who are punished for constitutionally-protected speech. FIRE never loses these cases.
Dozens of examples, including those that don’t reach the litigation stage, can be found at FIRE’s website, www.thefire.org. Here are a few:
***Cal-Poly, 2002. Student Steven Hinkle posted a flier in the campus Multicultural Center advertising a College-Republican-sponsored speech by Mason Weaver, author of It’s OK To Leave The Plantation. The flier displayed only the title of the book, the time and place of the event, and a picture of the author, an African-American. After some black students objected the poster was offensive, Hinkle, following a seven-hour hearing before the Cal-Poly Judicial Affairs Office, was ordered to write letters of apology to the offended students or face “severe penalties.”
***Central Michigan U, 2001. In October 2001, an administrator ordered a number of students to remove various patriotic displays (American flags, eagles, etc.) from their dormitory because the displays were offensive.
***Holy Cross, 2001. In October 2001, the chairman of the sociology department ordered a secretary’s American flag display removed from the office. The flag was in memory of her friend Todd Beamer, who fought and died on United flight 93 over Pennsylvania on 9-11.
***San Diego State, 2001. In September 2001, Zewdalem Kebede witnessed a group of Saudi Arabian students loudly expressing their delight at the success of the terrorist attacks. Kebede spoke to them in Arabic, condemning their opinions and bad taste. When the students complained, Kebede was subjected to a disciplinary hearing and issued a formal “letter of admonishment” in which he was told to avoid similar confrontations or face “severe disciplinary measures.”
***William Patterson U, 2005. Jihad Daniel, a Muslim student and employee of the college, received a mass email from Professor Arlene Scala promoting a showing of a film described as “a lesbian relationship story.” He replied privately to the professor, asking that he not be sent any mail about “Connie and Sally” or “Adam and Steve” because his religion viewed these relationships as “perversions.” Mr. Daniel received an official letter of reprimand in his employment file noting his violation of sexual harassment regulations.
***U of New Hampshire, 2004. Timothy Garneau posted fliers in the elevators of his dormitory suggesting that women could lose the “freshman 15” (weight gained the first year of college) by taking the stairs. Charged with “acts of dishonesty, violation of affirmative action policy and harassment,” Garneau was expelled from student housing, given disciplinary probation, required to meet with a psychological counselor and write a 3000-word essay about it, and further required to submit a letter of apology to the student newspaper.
***U of Cal-Irvine, 2004. Members of the College Republicans staged an Affirmative Action Bake Sale to dramatize the unfairness of affirmative action programs. Prices for donuts were based on the race and sex of the consumer, with white males paying a dollar, Hispanics 75 cents, and blacks 50 cents. A spirited discussion ensued, until the Dean of Students stopped the sale, claiming it violated student regulations on discrimination. College Republican groups have set up these sales at universities around the country, and were also shut down at Illinois State and SMU. At DePaul, the students were charged with violating the school’s harassment policy.
Another tactic used by college administrations to silence views they dislike is to allow, or even encourage, radical students to do the silencing by means of vandalism, theft, or other violence. At the University of Colorado, for example, an affirmative action bake sale ended when, with campus police in attendance, counter-demonstrators were permitted to rip down signs and overturn tables, without opposition or consequences.
In 2005, at Washington State University, student playwright Chris Lee produced his play, “Passion Of The Musical,” and advertised it widely as “offensive or inflammatory to all audiences.” During one performance, a group of forty protesters repeatedly stood up, shouted they were offended, and threatened audience members and the cast. When Lee finally stopped the play and asked campus security to remove the protesters, they refused his request. Evidence later surfaced that the Washington State Office For Campus Involvement had bought forty tickets for the protesters with university funds and had helped organize the disruption.
A common tactic for radical students is to steal the entire press run of a student newspaper containing “offensive” (i.e., politically conservative) material. Typically, the thieves are never punished. In fact, the theft is sometimes defended by administrators and professors as itself being an exercise of free speech. Again, these incidents are found across the country at a wide variety of institutions. A few that garnered significant press coverage were at Berkeley, UNC-Wilmington, U Mass, Loyola Marymount, Boston College, Morehead State, and Oregon State. FIRE has received reports on hundreds of such events.
It may be tempting to attribute these cases to a few ignorant zealots who happen to be college administrators, but in fact, they happen regularly across the country, in small schools and large, in red states and blue. Also, even when the light is shone on the suppression of speech at an institution supposedly dedicated to intellectual freedom, schools rarely back down. They litigate. They fight these complaints, spending many thousands on lawyers and thousands more on settlements and judgments. But even after they lose, the speech codes remain.
Illegal speech codes grew out of a misreading of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972, federal laws that prohibit real harassment in the workplace and on campus. Because of this misunderstanding, and because of their own political views, the people who run our universities came to believe they were permitted, or even required, to regulate offensive speech. While it seems unlikely anyone could still believe this, the speech codes are now in place and there is strong support for them on most campuses.
University speech codes illustrate the “slippery slope” in full regalia. Federal laws designed to prevent the most severe, persistent, frightening sort of harassment (the equivalent of “stalking” under state laws), have morphed into an Orwellian system of oppression.
Thus, expressing one’s religious view that homosexuality is immoral becomes a hate crime. Poking fun at affirmative action policies results in disciplinary hearings and punishment. American flags get ripped from dormitory walls a month after 9-11. Once the door is opened to the notion that speech can be banned because someone is offended by it, no speech is safe. All variety of commentary becomes subject to the heckler’s veto.
American universities will eventually get the message that their speech codes are illegal, but in nations without a First Amendment (i.e., everywhere else), and without a Terminiello case, there is no particular reason to tolerate speech the majority deems hateful. And since, as a matter of practical politics, there is no organized constituency in favor of the most offensive speech, it is often banned.
In 1998, an Ontario man was convicted of a hate crime for distributing pamphlets about Islam. The offending pamphlet (truthfully) listed atrocities committed in the name of Allah, and urged the reader to be careful in dealing with Canadian Muslims.
More recent Canadian law has criminalized the public disapproval of homosexuality. In 2001, Hugh Owens placed an ad in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix in which a drawing of two males holding hands was overlaid with a red circle and a diagonal bar. The ad also referenced (but did not quote) four Bible passages that condemn homosexuality. Mr. Owens and the newspaper were fined $4500 under the Saskatchewan Human Rights Code, and the ruling was upheld by the Queen’s Bench, where a Justice Barclay wrote that “the advertisement can objectively be seen as exposing homosexuals to hatred or ridicule.” And under Canadian law, that’s all that matters. In another recent case from Ontario (not a speech case), a printer (a Christian) was fined $5000 for refusing a job printing letterhead for a gay advocacy group.
Hate speech laws are also found throughout Europe.
Shortly after Muslims carried out bomb attacks in London in 2005, a German man printed up toilet paper with the word “Koran” on every sheet, then sent the rolls to TV stations and mosques. He was given a one-year prison sentence, which will be followed by 300 hours of community service. I
In an odd English case, the Mayor of London was brought before the Adjudication Panel For England over a heated exchange he had with a reporter for the Evening Standard, a paper the Mayor despises. The Mayor asked the reporter (a Jew) if he had been a German war criminal and compared him to a concentration camp guard. The result was a four-week suspension for the Mayor, who will also have to pay legal fees of $175,000.
In Sweden, the Rev. Aake Green was sentenced to a month in prison for a sermon denouncing homosexuality as “a cancer on society.” After a yearlong appeal, the conviction was overturned and the pastor remains free, but the prosecution has announced plans for a further appeal, which will include a demand for a longer sentence.
Though the Rev. Green may escape punishment for his remarks from the pulpit, the effect of such laws on speech was apparent in his post-appeal statement to the press. “I’ll go on preaching as usual but I won’t be dedicating so much time to this issue,” he said. (This “chilling effect,” under US law, is why even an unsuccessful attempt to censor speech, or a rarely-enforced speech code, is actionable. On February 22, 2006, the Alliance Defense Fund filed a lawsuit against Penn State over its speech code in which the plaintiff is a student who has never been disciplined by the university for his speech, though others have been.)
The most widespread hate-speech laws are those banning public display of nazi symbols or denial of the holocaust. There are ten such countries in Europe (France, Belgium, Switzerland, Germany, Austria, Romania, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Lithuania and Poland.) In addition, there are other countries (e.g., Canada and the U.K.) that do not explicitly ban holocaust denial, but do so under broader laws against inciting racial hatred.
On February 20, 2006, a British historian named David Irving was sentenced to three years in prison by an Austrian court for denying the holocaust in a 1989 publication (in England). The prosecutor is appealing the sentence as too lenient since the 1992 Austrian law provides for a sentence of up to ten years.
There is solid support for hate speech laws, of various kinds, across Europe. In fact, the EU bureaucracy is currently engaged in writing regulations to ban various forms of offensive speech on the internet. It is against this backdrop that the Danish cartoon war erupted.
The protests began with boycotts of Danish dairy products in Arabian countries and quickly progressed to riots, embassy-burning and blood in the streets. As the violence escalated, there were repeated demands that the government of Denmark, and other countries, apologize. And some government officials did, but not the Prime Minister of Denmark. Anders Fogh Rasmussen, though noting that burning a Koran would be a crime in Denmark, claimed the Danish government could do nothing about the cartoons because it did not control the press. In other words, the Danish government had nothing to do with it, so how could they apologize?
Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Hitler-wannabe who is now President of Iran, in one of his more rational moments, hit the nail squarely on the noggin: “How can the insulting of the prophet of Muslims worldwide be justified within the framework of press freedom, but investigating the fairy tale holocaust is not?”
And he’s got a point, doesn’t he? In Europe, they’re trying to keep skinheads off the internet, they fine the elected mayor of a great city because he insults a reporter, they lock up a historian because he denied the holocaust in a different country three years before a law was passed saying you can’t deny the holocaust, and they want to put a preacher in jail for quoting Leviticus on Sunday morning. SO WHAT ABOUT US? WE’RE PISSED TOO! WHAT ABOUT OUR DAMN PROPHET??? Now, suddenly, you’re claiming there’s some free speech principle involved? Since when did YOU ever bother about free speech?
The Muslims are correct this time. There is no reasonable basis upon which Denmark or any other European country can stand on principle, because they recognize no such principle. If speech is offensive, it is banned, and speakers go to jail. Putting aside the issue of how much of the rioting is actually government-sponsored, there’s no question that Muslims are genuinely annoyed by the graphic depiction, especially in a negative light, of their prophet, so why aren’t the cartoonists eating out of tin cups? If some kid at Duesseldorf U. put a swastika in his dorm window, the Germans would treat him like Sherman treated Georgia. Once you begin banning offensive speech, you’re going to encounter some sensitive people (like Muslims), and you will have to accommodate them. When you allow the heckler a veto, you may be unpleasantly surprised by how many hecklers there are and how easily they are offended.
Europe’s failure to protect hate speech left an opening for the growing Muslim population there to exploit, and this particular battle in the culture war was over before it started, with Western freedom exposed as an illusion. European governments and journalists had no idea how to respond because they weren’t sure what they believed in, so many governments and newspapers apologized to the Muslim world. What newspaper now will publish words or pictures (even truthful ones) that will enrage the Muslim population? Those that do not censor themselves can expect no protection from the law; in fact, they may themselves be arrested for offending the rabble.
Apart from the freedom that disappears when a people fail to understand the importance of protecting hate speech, the cartoon war illustrates another danger of permitting the heckler a veto. As the Terminiello court pointed out, the peril for society is that the loudest and most violent hecklers will rule.
It may seem polite or civilized or politically-correct to ban speech that may offend one group or another, but this impulse is extremely shortsighted. What happens when groups of “victims” disagree over what speech is offensive? What will happen in Europe, for example, when an imam calls for the silencing of gay advocacy groups because their views are an affront to Allah? Homosexuals are executed in some Muslim countries; what happens when the faithful demand the same in Europe? It is one thing to lock up an elderly small-town Swedish pastor for condemning homosexuality, but would the Europeans do the same to a Muslim preacher who said far worse? An Iranian university just held an academic conference on the “myth” of the holocaust. Suppose someone decided to launch such an event in France?
When conflicts like this arise, the only method of resolving it will be to accede to the wishes of those who are most offended (i.e., the loudest). Since there is no principle involved other than a “right” not to have one’s (subjective) feelings wounded, those with the strongest feelings should prevail. And can anyone doubt that the winners of the rage-fest will be followers of Islam?
America, however, is different. America is better. Here, at least some people understand that if we want any freedom at all, we must accept the possibility we will sometimes be offended by other people’s exercise of it. It’s our law. It’s our tradition. “F*** em if they can’t take a joke” might as well be written in the Constitution. Several years ago, Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ” was displayed in a public museum. The sculpture, a statue of Jesus immersed in a plastic case filled with the artist’s own urine, was deeply upsetting to many (perhaps most) people in this very Christian nation, but I remember no one calling for the suppression of this work. The only issue, discussed endlessly on TV and radio and in editorials, was whether artists like Mr. Serrano should receive public funding. Ban Muhammed cartoons? Ban offensive speech? Give me a break. Americans (outside of academia) don’t know how to think like that.
As Europe descends into oppression, we can be thankful that free speech, especially hate speech, survives here. America is still a place where you can say any damn thing you please. Maybe you’ll get punched in the nose for it, and maybe you should get punched in the nose for it, but you won’t get arrested. Or silenced.
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
Wednesday, October 4, 2006
A MATTER OF ETHICS
I was in the car a few Sundays ago, looking for a football game on the radio, and I happened upon one of those call-in medical shows that fill out the right-wing radio schedule when Rush and Sean and Michael and Laura are all hunkered down somewhere with a box of cigars, a case of single-malt scotch and a 57-inch plasma TV tuned to the NFL package.
Normally, a medical show would hold my attention for exactly the length of time it would take me to recognize it was a medical show and hit the dial. I disapprove of these things under the best of circumstances, but on a Sunday afternoon in the Fall, I find it positively frightening to discover there are people (Americans!) who would rather talk about ginkgo and bowel movements than watch Peyton Manning dissect the Seahawks’ secondary. The shock of this realization invariably makes me wonder, briefly, whether al-Qaeda might someday win.
But at the moment I tuned in, as luck would have it, the “doctor” was not talking about ginkgo or bowel movements. He wasn’t even talking about cholesterol. Instead, he was launching into a problem in medical ethics.
And here it is.
A married couple goes to a doctor’s office to inquire about their fertility problems. The doctor examines each of them, administers some tests, and tells them to return on Thursday for the results. As they are leaving, the wife says, “Thanks, doctor. This is very important to us. We’ve been trying to have another child for seven years now.”
Before the second appointment, the doctor learns the husband is sterile. There is no other conclusion. It is a congenital condition, and while it might be corrected with surgery, the husband is not the father of their seven-year-old child.
Thursday comes. You’re the doctor. What do you tell the couple?
There’s no right answer, of course. Or rather, there is a right answer, but considerable disagreement about what it is. All us mortals can do is argue about it, and it turns out to be a great question to argue about. I brought it up, over the pie and cheesecake and coffee, at our Thanksgiving dinner, and the discussion went on for quite a while. One thing I can report at the outset is that even those with positions on the two extremes---1) tell the hard truth or 2) lie like a dog---tend not to get adamant about it. Almost everyone, it seems, can see the other side of the coin.
While you are considering your answer, and before I tell you mine, let me specify one rule: you can’t duck the question. One guy (a lawyer, of course), said the solution was to call the ethics board at the AMA and get a ruling. OK, I said, then the question is: what answer should they give you? Another guy (a doctor) avoided the question by claiming there was no such thing as medical certainty, and thus, nothing he might tell the couple could be characterized as “true” or “false.” In a nutshell, he was arguing it was impossible for him to lie when he was offering a medical opinion. (A convenient position for a doctor, n’est-ce pas?) He never did give me an answer.
The hypothetical is designed to engage our view of right and wrong---that’s the purpose of it. Don’t fight it.
On one extreme is the view of the doctor on the radio show. He said he would sit the couple down and tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This was his obligation as a doctor, he said. The couple came to him seeking a medical opinion and he would betray his oath if he were less than completely frank, no matter the consequences. As a policy matter, he noted that with DNA and genetic testing for diseases, this sort of issue was arising with increasing frequency, and it was essential to have an ironclad rule for the situation. Doctors could not be expected to “play God” with their patients, he suggested.
It’s a reasoned point of view, and I can see why a doctor, in particular, would feel that way. Among my unscientific sample, however, this is an extreme and unusual position. Only two people thought “the truth” trumped everything, and one of them was the lawyer whose first impulse was to duck the question.
The most common response, the middle road, is: “Well, he has to tell them the truth, right?” Then there is a pause of five or ten seconds. Then the person says, “Well, maybe I wouldn’t do that, exactly.” Following this, any number of creative lies emerge:
• “He’s been riding his bike too much.”
• “Maybe I check his medical records for the last seven years, and whatever happened to him is the reason he’s sterile."
• “I tell the wife the truth and ask her what she wants me to tell him.”
• “I tell them their first child was close to a miracle and he needs surgery to have another.”
My own view is at the other extreme---it would never occur to me to tell them the truth. I’m not sure what lie I would tell, but if I were a doctor, I’m sure I could invent something convincing, and I would. I would do so in spite of whatever ethical rules I learned in medical school and whatever legal liability I would be risking. I would falsify lab reports, if necessary. I would probably continue to lie even if they got a second opinion from another doctor and accused me of lying to them. I would tell them the second doctor was wrong, and subtly suggest he was well known to the police. Only when faced with threats of violence from the husband and service of a subpoena would I admit the truth.
Certainly, the truth is important, in an abstract sort of way. And yes, there is a contractual obligation on the doctor’s part to provide the service he has been engaged to perform. To see no further than these (perfectly legitimate) concerns, however, is to reduce the doctor’s role to that of the guy who sells you a new set of radial tires. A professional has an obligation to go a bit further, partly because he is in possession of specialized knowledge and the client is not. The client may not know what facts are important. He may not even know what the problem is. That’s why a professional has to acquaint himself with the entire picture, and has to use his judgment in identifying the problem and then deciding how to solve it.
How much further? Well, I admit my answer pushes professional responsibility to its limits, but once you acknowledge that the obligation to a patient or client extends further than that of the tire-monger, aren’t you forced to consider the interests of the seven-year-old child you have never met? And if, as a professional, you take that first little step toward an expanded view of your obligation---well, personally, I quickly come to the conclusion that the kid’s interests are the only ones that matter.
Morally, he trumps everybody. I’m an outsider here, but the one thing I know is that the kid is a completely innocent party. To my way of thinking, if that kid isn’t asking what happened nine months before he was born, I’m not going to tell him. I’m not going to tell anybody. And the kid isn’t asking. Why should he? He has a Momma and a Dada, and they all live together, and love each other, and whatever happened ninety-three months ago is ancient history.
It’s apparently ancient history to the husband and wife too, by the way. Remember---I’m just their doctor. I have no particular interest, professional or otherwise, in what happened way back when. All I see is a married couple that wants to have another kid. Maybe the husband had suspicions. If so, they’re gone now. The wife knew there was a possibility, but after seven years, she has persuaded herself her husband was the father. Maybe it was a two-week fling. Maybe it was a drunken Christmas party. Maybe, in her mind, it “didn’t matter.” What do I care? I’m only concerned with the kid, and what good can come to that seven-year-old by me telling the truth?
I have presented this argument to “truth-tellers” and have received the following response: “But it might be good for them to learn the truth. Maybe they will finally deal with the underlying issues in their relationship. Maybe they will reach a new understanding and a new level of partnership and love.”
“Yes,” I respond cordially. “And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.”
Speaking simply as a guy, qua guy, knowledge of a wife’s infidelity and a husband’s non-paternity is not going to catapult anybody to a new level of partnership and love. I don’t even know a guy who is that “evolved,” though I know some who probably think they are. A few guys would kill. More would divorce. About the best outcome would be a long series of therapy sessions and hot tubs and long, meaningful chats and crap like that. Meanwhile, the kid (remember the kid???) is wondering what the hell is wrong with his Momma and Dada. In my limited experience, kids don’t want Momma and Dada to have long, meaningful chats and deal with the underlying issues in their relationship. They prefer it when their parents are sitting on the patio drinking beer and talking about Britney Spears and Hillary Clinton. Kids want Momma to make cookies sometimes, and they want Dada to take them to a ballgame and buy them a hotdog and tell them a stupid joke. Kids HATE underlying issues. Nobody hates underlying issues more than kids do. Not even me.
What is interesting about this problem is that all of us can sympathize with the doctor. He is simply doing his job to the best of his ability, and suddenly he is confronted with a moral and ethical dilemma. He did not choose to be placed in the position he finds himself. Nobody would. Nevertheless, there it is. He holds the fate of this family in his hands and he has to decide what to do. He can consult other doctors or call the AMA Ethics Board or ask his priest, but the final decision is his. He’s stuck with it.
What engages us is that we are all placed in this position from time to time, typically when we least expect it. Moral issues are part of the human condition, as much as we may try to avoid them. But it’s not really an answer, is it, to “call the Ethics Board” or dismiss the issue with some bromide about “the truth” or “medical certainty” or “playing God.” Not that “the truth” is a concept without value, but why should it triumph here, in this situation, with this family? As my criminal law professor used to say, “Justify your answer!” Perhaps it can be justified, but if the parents get divorced and the kid starts selling dope on the corner, you will need a better answer for yourself than, “Well, that’s what the Ethics Board told me to do,” or “In medical school, they told us not to play God.” Because you were playing God. You were put in a position where you were forced to play God. You just made the wrong decision because you wanted to pretend you weren’t making a decision at all. This is the worst possible strategy when faced with a moral dilemma.
One way to approach these questions is to ask yourself, “If I choose Option A, and there are terrible consequences, can I still defend my decision?” Then ask yourself the same question about Option B. In this case, the first question becomes, “If I tell the truth and the family disintegrates, will I still feel I did the right thing?” Then ask, “If I lie, and I face discipline for an ethical violation (or get a punch in the nose), will I still believe my lie was justified?”
I remain curious about this question. If you disagree with me (and most people do), send me an email and tell me what you think.
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
Normally, a medical show would hold my attention for exactly the length of time it would take me to recognize it was a medical show and hit the dial. I disapprove of these things under the best of circumstances, but on a Sunday afternoon in the Fall, I find it positively frightening to discover there are people (Americans!) who would rather talk about ginkgo and bowel movements than watch Peyton Manning dissect the Seahawks’ secondary. The shock of this realization invariably makes me wonder, briefly, whether al-Qaeda might someday win.
But at the moment I tuned in, as luck would have it, the “doctor” was not talking about ginkgo or bowel movements. He wasn’t even talking about cholesterol. Instead, he was launching into a problem in medical ethics.
And here it is.
A married couple goes to a doctor’s office to inquire about their fertility problems. The doctor examines each of them, administers some tests, and tells them to return on Thursday for the results. As they are leaving, the wife says, “Thanks, doctor. This is very important to us. We’ve been trying to have another child for seven years now.”
Before the second appointment, the doctor learns the husband is sterile. There is no other conclusion. It is a congenital condition, and while it might be corrected with surgery, the husband is not the father of their seven-year-old child.
Thursday comes. You’re the doctor. What do you tell the couple?
There’s no right answer, of course. Or rather, there is a right answer, but considerable disagreement about what it is. All us mortals can do is argue about it, and it turns out to be a great question to argue about. I brought it up, over the pie and cheesecake and coffee, at our Thanksgiving dinner, and the discussion went on for quite a while. One thing I can report at the outset is that even those with positions on the two extremes---1) tell the hard truth or 2) lie like a dog---tend not to get adamant about it. Almost everyone, it seems, can see the other side of the coin.
While you are considering your answer, and before I tell you mine, let me specify one rule: you can’t duck the question. One guy (a lawyer, of course), said the solution was to call the ethics board at the AMA and get a ruling. OK, I said, then the question is: what answer should they give you? Another guy (a doctor) avoided the question by claiming there was no such thing as medical certainty, and thus, nothing he might tell the couple could be characterized as “true” or “false.” In a nutshell, he was arguing it was impossible for him to lie when he was offering a medical opinion. (A convenient position for a doctor, n’est-ce pas?) He never did give me an answer.
The hypothetical is designed to engage our view of right and wrong---that’s the purpose of it. Don’t fight it.
On one extreme is the view of the doctor on the radio show. He said he would sit the couple down and tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. This was his obligation as a doctor, he said. The couple came to him seeking a medical opinion and he would betray his oath if he were less than completely frank, no matter the consequences. As a policy matter, he noted that with DNA and genetic testing for diseases, this sort of issue was arising with increasing frequency, and it was essential to have an ironclad rule for the situation. Doctors could not be expected to “play God” with their patients, he suggested.
It’s a reasoned point of view, and I can see why a doctor, in particular, would feel that way. Among my unscientific sample, however, this is an extreme and unusual position. Only two people thought “the truth” trumped everything, and one of them was the lawyer whose first impulse was to duck the question.
The most common response, the middle road, is: “Well, he has to tell them the truth, right?” Then there is a pause of five or ten seconds. Then the person says, “Well, maybe I wouldn’t do that, exactly.” Following this, any number of creative lies emerge:
• “He’s been riding his bike too much.”
• “Maybe I check his medical records for the last seven years, and whatever happened to him is the reason he’s sterile."
• “I tell the wife the truth and ask her what she wants me to tell him.”
• “I tell them their first child was close to a miracle and he needs surgery to have another.”
My own view is at the other extreme---it would never occur to me to tell them the truth. I’m not sure what lie I would tell, but if I were a doctor, I’m sure I could invent something convincing, and I would. I would do so in spite of whatever ethical rules I learned in medical school and whatever legal liability I would be risking. I would falsify lab reports, if necessary. I would probably continue to lie even if they got a second opinion from another doctor and accused me of lying to them. I would tell them the second doctor was wrong, and subtly suggest he was well known to the police. Only when faced with threats of violence from the husband and service of a subpoena would I admit the truth.
Certainly, the truth is important, in an abstract sort of way. And yes, there is a contractual obligation on the doctor’s part to provide the service he has been engaged to perform. To see no further than these (perfectly legitimate) concerns, however, is to reduce the doctor’s role to that of the guy who sells you a new set of radial tires. A professional has an obligation to go a bit further, partly because he is in possession of specialized knowledge and the client is not. The client may not know what facts are important. He may not even know what the problem is. That’s why a professional has to acquaint himself with the entire picture, and has to use his judgment in identifying the problem and then deciding how to solve it.
How much further? Well, I admit my answer pushes professional responsibility to its limits, but once you acknowledge that the obligation to a patient or client extends further than that of the tire-monger, aren’t you forced to consider the interests of the seven-year-old child you have never met? And if, as a professional, you take that first little step toward an expanded view of your obligation---well, personally, I quickly come to the conclusion that the kid’s interests are the only ones that matter.
Morally, he trumps everybody. I’m an outsider here, but the one thing I know is that the kid is a completely innocent party. To my way of thinking, if that kid isn’t asking what happened nine months before he was born, I’m not going to tell him. I’m not going to tell anybody. And the kid isn’t asking. Why should he? He has a Momma and a Dada, and they all live together, and love each other, and whatever happened ninety-three months ago is ancient history.
It’s apparently ancient history to the husband and wife too, by the way. Remember---I’m just their doctor. I have no particular interest, professional or otherwise, in what happened way back when. All I see is a married couple that wants to have another kid. Maybe the husband had suspicions. If so, they’re gone now. The wife knew there was a possibility, but after seven years, she has persuaded herself her husband was the father. Maybe it was a two-week fling. Maybe it was a drunken Christmas party. Maybe, in her mind, it “didn’t matter.” What do I care? I’m only concerned with the kid, and what good can come to that seven-year-old by me telling the truth?
I have presented this argument to “truth-tellers” and have received the following response: “But it might be good for them to learn the truth. Maybe they will finally deal with the underlying issues in their relationship. Maybe they will reach a new understanding and a new level of partnership and love.”
“Yes,” I respond cordially. “And maybe monkeys will fly out of my butt.”
Speaking simply as a guy, qua guy, knowledge of a wife’s infidelity and a husband’s non-paternity is not going to catapult anybody to a new level of partnership and love. I don’t even know a guy who is that “evolved,” though I know some who probably think they are. A few guys would kill. More would divorce. About the best outcome would be a long series of therapy sessions and hot tubs and long, meaningful chats and crap like that. Meanwhile, the kid (remember the kid???) is wondering what the hell is wrong with his Momma and Dada. In my limited experience, kids don’t want Momma and Dada to have long, meaningful chats and deal with the underlying issues in their relationship. They prefer it when their parents are sitting on the patio drinking beer and talking about Britney Spears and Hillary Clinton. Kids want Momma to make cookies sometimes, and they want Dada to take them to a ballgame and buy them a hotdog and tell them a stupid joke. Kids HATE underlying issues. Nobody hates underlying issues more than kids do. Not even me.
What is interesting about this problem is that all of us can sympathize with the doctor. He is simply doing his job to the best of his ability, and suddenly he is confronted with a moral and ethical dilemma. He did not choose to be placed in the position he finds himself. Nobody would. Nevertheless, there it is. He holds the fate of this family in his hands and he has to decide what to do. He can consult other doctors or call the AMA Ethics Board or ask his priest, but the final decision is his. He’s stuck with it.
What engages us is that we are all placed in this position from time to time, typically when we least expect it. Moral issues are part of the human condition, as much as we may try to avoid them. But it’s not really an answer, is it, to “call the Ethics Board” or dismiss the issue with some bromide about “the truth” or “medical certainty” or “playing God.” Not that “the truth” is a concept without value, but why should it triumph here, in this situation, with this family? As my criminal law professor used to say, “Justify your answer!” Perhaps it can be justified, but if the parents get divorced and the kid starts selling dope on the corner, you will need a better answer for yourself than, “Well, that’s what the Ethics Board told me to do,” or “In medical school, they told us not to play God.” Because you were playing God. You were put in a position where you were forced to play God. You just made the wrong decision because you wanted to pretend you weren’t making a decision at all. This is the worst possible strategy when faced with a moral dilemma.
One way to approach these questions is to ask yourself, “If I choose Option A, and there are terrible consequences, can I still defend my decision?” Then ask yourself the same question about Option B. In this case, the first question becomes, “If I tell the truth and the family disintegrates, will I still feel I did the right thing?” Then ask, “If I lie, and I face discipline for an ethical violation (or get a punch in the nose), will I still believe my lie was justified?”
I remain curious about this question. If you disagree with me (and most people do), send me an email and tell me what you think.
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
MY FAVORITE ARGUMENT FOR THE EXISTENCE OF GOD
Dear Joe---
Please understand I am not trying to convert you from your atheistic ways, but our conversation the other day made me realize I don’t get a chance to talk about the existence of God as much as I’d like to. People I mention it to on the subway just don’t seem that interested.
For me, creation remains the central mystery. Where did all the stuff come from? All the galaxies and chemicals and atoms---all the stuff that went into the big bang---where did it come from? Your answer, I think, was that it just appeared, or that it was always there, somehow.
This idea runs counter to everything you and I and everybody else in the history of the world have ever observed. Causes and effects are everywhere---nothing comes out of nothing. And yet, you think that at the very beginning, at the very first moment, it did. There was no particular reason for it. It just happened. At the very start, there was matter, or a creative event, or a coming into existence, or something, and then this magical process ceased forever as we were thrown into a universe of cause and effect. Why? How? And if you don’t know, can you at least point to SOMETHING that would justify your faith in this scenario?
My problem with it is that I cannot make the leap of faith you find so comfortable and certain. The idea of an effect without a cause is not only alien to my experience, I can’t even conceive of such a thing. I don’t know how to start thinking about it. In other words, it’s not that I have “faith” and you don’t. It’s impossible for a human being with a mind not to have “faith,” because there is no natural process that explains creation. You have faith too, but it’s in a process I find so outlandish and weird and irrational that I can’t imagine it.
While your theory contradicts our knowledge of the physical world, positing the existence of God contradicts nothing. My God is the Creator. Everything in the universe I am familiar with has a cause, and He is the first cause. That’s the definition of God. There can be no proof, in any scientific fashion, of His existence, but He fits. He makes sense.
I would add that I can find hints of God’s existence in my own observations, and in wisdom that has come down through the centuries, and in the Bible. It’s possible that all us believers are just kidding ourselves, of course, but your alternative offers nothing---no evidence, no hints, no explanation. In addition, we must believe that everything we see and understand is false.
Love,
Joe
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
Please understand I am not trying to convert you from your atheistic ways, but our conversation the other day made me realize I don’t get a chance to talk about the existence of God as much as I’d like to. People I mention it to on the subway just don’t seem that interested.
For me, creation remains the central mystery. Where did all the stuff come from? All the galaxies and chemicals and atoms---all the stuff that went into the big bang---where did it come from? Your answer, I think, was that it just appeared, or that it was always there, somehow.
This idea runs counter to everything you and I and everybody else in the history of the world have ever observed. Causes and effects are everywhere---nothing comes out of nothing. And yet, you think that at the very beginning, at the very first moment, it did. There was no particular reason for it. It just happened. At the very start, there was matter, or a creative event, or a coming into existence, or something, and then this magical process ceased forever as we were thrown into a universe of cause and effect. Why? How? And if you don’t know, can you at least point to SOMETHING that would justify your faith in this scenario?
My problem with it is that I cannot make the leap of faith you find so comfortable and certain. The idea of an effect without a cause is not only alien to my experience, I can’t even conceive of such a thing. I don’t know how to start thinking about it. In other words, it’s not that I have “faith” and you don’t. It’s impossible for a human being with a mind not to have “faith,” because there is no natural process that explains creation. You have faith too, but it’s in a process I find so outlandish and weird and irrational that I can’t imagine it.
While your theory contradicts our knowledge of the physical world, positing the existence of God contradicts nothing. My God is the Creator. Everything in the universe I am familiar with has a cause, and He is the first cause. That’s the definition of God. There can be no proof, in any scientific fashion, of His existence, but He fits. He makes sense.
I would add that I can find hints of God’s existence in my own observations, and in wisdom that has come down through the centuries, and in the Bible. It’s possible that all us believers are just kidding ourselves, of course, but your alternative offers nothing---no evidence, no hints, no explanation. In addition, we must believe that everything we see and understand is false.
Love,
Joe
Copyright 2006 Michael Kubacki
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