No Union Left Behind

Time Magazine gave a "report card" to the "No Child Left Behind" education reform. Parts of the story they got perfectly right: states have continually dropped their standards to create the illusion of progress, and an enormous emphasis on basic reading and math skills is deforming the educational process, squeezing out other subjects and ignoring students at either end of the Bell curve.

And yet . . . how did Time manage to get through an entire seven page article without ever talking about what was causing the schools to fail in the first place? Not once in seven pages could they screw up the courage to talk about suspected (but still hotly debated) causes of low performance in inner-city schools: black culture that undervalued education, low involvement of parents, diminished expectations due to continuous poverty (perhaps caused in part by racial discrimination), more single-parent homes, less unstructured play, more television watching, and (God forbid we should say it) poor quality of teachers. At least the New York Review of Books could talk about these issues, addressing important factors without rushing to find single causes or single solutions to the problem.

I suspect, more than anything, that discussing such factors would make their recommendations less compelling. Every single recommendation that Time makes -- remove punitive measures, create national standards, don't do drastic overhauls of schools, provide more funding for teachers -- are practically identical to the talking points from the teachers unions. Hmmm . . . is this really an unbiased evaluation?

I should hope that it's clear that more money is not the answer . . . at least, not pouring more money into the current system. While those defending the education status-quo have sliced and diced assertions that we spend more money than any other industrialized nation on education, there are numerous internal examples of how some schools get vastly improved performance without spending more money. (See the NYRB article for descriptions of the KIPP Academies.) Some complain that the strategies of such schools "cannot be widely reproduced." That may be true . . . in the current culture and the current system. But who said we have to keep the current system? Oh . . . yeah . . . the unions.

Oligarchy of the interested

Kenny makes a good point about democratic systems of government: only a minority of people are really qualified to participate. Or, as the Onion put it in a recent headline: "38 percent of people not actually entitled to their opinion." And I, like Kenny, put myself in the category of the unqualified, at least for the vast majority of local elections and many national issues as well.

Unfortunately, it's very easy to go from that insight straight on to the sort of snooty, the-intellectual-elite-know-best kind of attitude that Al Gore and many New England-educated blueblood blue-state progressives evince. Underneath Gore's plea for a more reasoned government, I hear an intellectual's arrogant frustration: "Fools! Everything would go so much better if you just acknowledged that I'm right."

The weird thing is, in spite of the seeming collective stupidity of so many people, massive amounts of useful information can be extracted from collective opinions. For instance, predictive markets that allow people to wager on the outcomes of elections are incredibly accurate at predicting the outcomes. And free financial markets have worked for decades on the assumption that the market as a whole is going to be smarter than any single individual. Markets are messy and they are often wrong, but they seem to be pretty good at handling all kinds of complex calculations. So maybe the same principles can be applied to political decisions, as well. Any one of us might be pretty stupid, but collectively we may manage to make reasonably good policy.

Revenge of the Nerd

In an excerpt from his forthcoming book, Al Gore bemoans the diminishing role of reason in public discourse. "Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?" he intones seriously.

Ok, Al, if you just stopped at "reason playing little role in decision-making," I would have been right there with you. You're right: a population that spends most of it's free time watching American Idol is not likely to be a hotbed of intellectual debate. But the moment you say "sharply diminished," I just had to bust out laughing.

Sharply diminished from what? Perhaps you thought you and Bill and epitomized rule-by-policy-wonk -- government by the smart. Perhaps you flattered yourself by thinking that you shared the essential ingredient of success with Clinton, which was being really smart. But that's where reason has actually clouded your vision. You saw William Jefferson Clinton, voracious reader of white papers. We saw Slick Willy -- a creature of charisma, for whom intelligence was merely a tool for power and pleasure, and definitely not a being dedicated to "the truth."

No, we didn't have more rational policy and reasoned debate back then. There never was a Golden Age of civil debate, even if you go all the way back to ancient Athens. Read the newspapers of century ago; the invective was more furious, the slanders more vile, the demagogery more numb-skulled than even today. Even Jesus was sold out by the mob . . . so why should you be surprised, if things are no better now?

Nor has the populace at large changed that much, either, for all of our television sets. Television was merely quantitative -- not qualitative -- advancement in mind-numbing technology. Before television, we had booze, and cards, and dice, and burlesque shows, and many other methods of pleasantly stifling the activity of our neurons. You needn't lecture me on the evils of television -- believe me, Al, I'm with you on that one -- but don't for a moment presume that, if you took away their televisions and gave them all blogs, you would have a nation of philosopher kings.

And don't think I'm putting down the intellect, Al. I'm a nerd, too. I believe in brain-power. I want to believe that the geek will inherit the earth. But that is not human nature, Al. Go back and read your Hume: reason is the handmaid of emotion, and not the other way around. Or, as Augie Turak puts it in more modern language: "Intellect has no oomph." People might be persuaded by intellect, but they are not motivated by intellect. Motivation is a phenomena of the imagination, desires and emotions . . . and politics is ultimate game of mass-motivation. Do not be deceived by raw intelligence, or the lack thereof. Political power always belonged to those who were long on conviction and brief on their talking points. Reagan was the "three-by-five card President" . . . and Clinton was the stay-on-message candidate who forsook analysis for "It's the economy, stupid."

Sizing up Obama

The New Yorker had a detailed profile of Barack Obama this past week ("The Conciliator," by Larissa MacFahquhar, May 7, 2007), which helped fill in my picture of the person and the candidate. Some impressions:

• I was especially pleased that he was described as "freakishly comfortable with himself." Politicians tend to be Enneagram Threes (performers dying to please) or Eights (charismatic powerhouses), and Obama breaks the mold by being low-key, reflective, and really well integrated in his being. Some political observers wonder whether that is entirely a good thing for his campaign -- what sane, well-integrated person would ever embark on a national political campaign? -- but I'm sure it is the secret to his status as a political phenome.
• I also was glad that he was confirmed to be a true "regular guy." Most politicians have larger-than-life notions of themselves and have to strain to pretend to be a regular guy; they seize upon the props, the hot dog and the coat over the shoulder, to look like a regular guy. Obama, amazingly, is a regular guy. Part of that stems from the fact that Obama struggled his entire life to become that regular Midwestern black man, securing an identity for himself outside of his turbulent upbringing.
• The article correctly identified the source of his cross-party appeal: he talks about liberal causes with conservative language. Someone with a conservative philosophy will not have an allergic reaction to his rhetoric, and still have the feeling of moral uplift by being "the good guy" who is trying to help the poor and the downtrodden. He really is the "compassionate conservative" that Republicans have tried to become in the last few years.
• Just because someone has great appeal as a person does not mean he is necessarily the right person to vote for. I could easily be seduced by Obama for his personal bearing, his personal story, and his conservative outlook, but not be entirely happy with his governance. Critics have said his voting record is about as liberal as they come.
• Still, what comforts me the most is that his notion of progress is slow, careful, and incremental. His policy proposals are strikingly modest and realistic. And actually, I think that's what our federal policy needs right now -- a tiny nudge to the left, not a swing. At least that would be better than what we have now: Republicans who fail to deliver on a truly conservative platform of fiscal responsibility.

How can it be justice if nobody got hanged?

I really thought the media zoo was over when Attorney General Roy Cooper dropped all charges against the Duke lacrosse players (falsely) accused of raping a dancer at a team party. But then I heard that there was still a group that was holding a protest against the dismissal of the charges. I thought, "Which part of 'completely innocent' did you not understand?' "

But, hey, maybe I'm not getting the full story. Did they come up with new evidence that was not presented? Was the dancer bringing a civil suit?

Well . . . no. The "protest" was fifteen "community members," at least three of whom worked with specific causes that had been trying to make hay from the allegations. ""They took the whole process as if all the defense and all the prosecution had been heard," said Shafeah M'Balia of the Black Workers for Justice Women's Commission."We say that is a travesty."

Ahhhh. Ok, let me explain something to you, Ms. M'Balia. Just because someone makes an accusation, doesn't mean that it gets to go to trial. You have to have, you know, credible evidence to bring someone to trial. That's how the system works. If you think a mere accusation should be sufficient to run someone into court, please go watch The Crucible two or three times and let it sink in.

I fail to understand why the self-appointed defenders of the helpless consistently think they need to accept every allegation at face value without a shred of critical appraisal. These leaders no doubt feel like they need to stand by the "victim" in solidarity, and cling to the cultural mythology that any accusation by a black woman about a white man simply must be true. A century ago the inverse was true -- a black man could be strung up on the mere say-so of a white woman -- and I have no desire to embrace mob justice again. To use such rationale shows that these activists are not interested in justice, but in power, and are no better than the lynch-mobs of yesteryear.

To accuse the Attorney General's office of being biased in dismissing the case is equally jaw-dropping. It's not like the state's lawyers didn't want to run in the lacrosse players into jail -- Nifong was savoring every last politically juicy drop of the of the case. The community, the university, everyone gave that women a huge amount of consideration in hearing out her case, to the extent that the players were tossed from the university on her mere accusation. Now the deparment is facing censure and Nifong faces disbarment for being too biased in favor of the accuser. And yet the activists are sticking to their guns -- anyone who disagrees with them is a racist, a bigot, a sexist pig.

Thank goodness it was only fifteen people at their little protest. The rest of the world has come to their senses.

Death Threats

When news of the Virginia Tech shootings trickled into my house, my wife said, "You should probably read up on that, the students might want to talk about it tonight." And I replied, "What's to be said? I just watched five students on CNN say exactly what everyone always says: I'm shocked, I'm stunned, this is terrible."

The UNC students, too, had kind of the same reaction. They didn't want the tragedy to go unnoted, but they were smart enough to know that these things defy explanation. One said, "I don't want to know why these things happen. I only marvel at the fact that they don't happen more often."

I've thought the same thing. Haven't you ever been driving down a two-lane road, and had the thought pop into your head: "I could just give this wheel a little jerk to the left, right now, and it would be all over." The mind amuses itself with these morbid imaginings, and yet, day after day, time after time, I don't come anywhere near the thought of actually doing it. And as much murderous rage as we might feel from time to time, we still manage to avoid acting on it a remarkably high percentage of the time. Whatever it is that keeps us from killing each other, it must be mighty powerful, that only the most deeply disturbed break its bonds.

The equally ludicrous question arises: "How can we keep our campuses safe?" As if lone gunmen were the leading cause of death for college students. Accidents, especially auto accidents, cause more deaths of college students than shooters, by three or four orders of magnitude. And yet everyone still climbs into their cars most every day. Clearly the problem is not the actual threat of violence, but the perception of threat: "Our students don't feel safe anymore."

That, too, has been a remarkable luxury for us. Many people are threatened by gunfire every day; they just happen to live in all the places the college students and their families don't. The wake-up call is not: "Oh my God, a new menace is on the loose." It's the realization that death can find you anywhere, any time, which has always been true for all people. Perhaps, instead of convulsing into fits of paranoia, we should seize the opportunity to relate more deeply to all those people, both here and abroad, who face the threat of death daily. Only the recognition of our own fragility, and our shared mortality, can inspire the kind of compassion that might prevent more violence in the future. Early warning systems and more campus police might help, but force and threat and lock and key have never been what ultimately protected us from violent death at each others' hands. The answer is inside of us. Let's look there.

Anti-poverty measures

I got a few responses from yesterday's post on social justice. One writes:

The thing that always keeps me fundamentally a liberal, despite having so many
points of disagreement with the liberals and Democrats on a variety of issues,
is this: there are people who were born into a position so low that their merits
simply don't matter. No matter how smart, hard- working, honest, and thrifty
they are, they simply do not have the opportunity to succeed. Furthermore, these
people are not a tiny minority: they are, in fact, the vast majority of the world.

This is a typical liberal viewpoint. It starts with the assumption that economic freedom (and the inequality that it inevitably creates) is the polar opposite of helping the poorest of the poor. Both conservatives and liberals concern themselves with helping the poor; they just have radically different philosophies about how to do it. The liberal answer is, in a nutshell: let's build a government that takes care of everyone. The conservative answer is, in a nutshell: this is too important to leave in the hands of the government -- WE need to take care of this problem.

I know, all the liberals are groaning: "Oh, God, don't get started with that compassionate conservatism crap." But consider this: conservatives give more time and money to charitable causes than their liberal peers, at all economic levels. American economic freedom has created lots of greedy, self-centered millionaires; it has also created generous people who give freely to help others. Conservatives are not uncaring souls who don't care about the poor: conservatives really believe that government cannot address social and economic woes as well as individuals and private organizations . . . and they put their money where their mouths are.

This is why Bill Gates and Warren Buffett are my all-American heroes. Instead of futzing about with U.S. politics (which, in the grand scheme, is rather like carping about Imus) they are quietly channelling billions of dollars to help the poorest of the poor. They demonstrate that it is possible to use capitalistic freedom to create wealth and then share it with those who need it most.

The conservative and liberal philosophies on social justice have other key disagreements, most notably about the importance of economic freedom. I think most liberals believe that world poverty is caused by evil capitalist corporations who exploit the world's resources and people. The vast majority of the world is living in poverty because men with guns oppress them. Thugs, warlords, militias, armies, governments oppress people. These men are not capitalists, trying to create wealth; they are thieves who take wealth. The people are poor because anything they try to build of lasting value can (and is) taken away from them. All the other ills of the world -- disease, hunger, ignorance -- ultimately flow from a lack of basic civil rights, especially property rights. Capitalist corporations might be complicit with this oppression, standing on the sidelines or maybe even supporting the dictators . . . but it's the dictators, or the rebel warlords trying to become dictators, who are the real oppressors.

(That doesn't mean that unfettered capitalism is always good. It is possible for capitalism to oppress and destroy. I just think the evils of capitalism are miniscule compared to the evils of, well, evil: bands of men using their power to steal, kill, and rape.)

Inequity and social justice

"Growing inequality" keeps reappearing in the news cycle, as regularly and uneventfully as rising obesity rates, falling test scores, and evidence of global warming. While most reporters stick to the facts, the unstated implication in all these reports is that inequality is bad, and a cause for moral concern. I give the BBC kudos for at least recognizing the assumption in their last round of coverage, when they spoke with some people from the Ayn Rand Foundation, for whom "egalitarian" is not considered a compliment.

I don't know what to think on the matter. On the one hand, I'm a staunch free-market capitalist. I believe that freedom inevitably creates economic inequality, and that people (both rich and poor) value having that freedom more than they value the wealth itself. Class warfare political rhetoric consistently fails to get any traction with voters primarily because everyone wants to believe that someday they will be rich.

On the other hand, I struggle with the usual upper-middle-class low-level angst about social inequalities. You only need a few stories about Indians working for fifty cents a day to wonder at your own relative wealth, and question the fairness of it all. The usual antidotes -- personal generosity, increased charitable giving of time and energy-- are only partially effective without a consistent philosophy about what's really for the greatest good. In college I dabbled with John Rawls' Theory of Justice to come up with a more consistent rationale for what society ought to be like. I liked his "veil of ignorance" standard: create a society in which you would be willing to participate, without knowing what your lot in that society is destined to be. For all its hypothetical impracticality, it's a clean standard that allows for lots of inequality but not too much. I have some problems with Rawls, too -- I am, at heart, still a meritocrat. I believe that the intelligent, diligent, and hardworking should prosper, and the stupid, lazy and slothful should sink . . . even though I can take no more credit for my native talents than any other environmental factor in my good fortune.

In the end I wind up where I began. I believe our society is the best model, or at least has the greatest chance of all models of getting things right. I think even my own questions and uncertainty about it are themselves a part of the model, and a part of what makes it work.

The Scooter Effect

The current brouhaha over the firing of eight U.S. Attorneys seems to be another politicizing of legal process, in almost exactly the same vein as the prosecution of Scooter Libby for perjury in the Plame affair. In both cases, you have a supposed "crime" that gets downgraded to an "outrage", once everyone figures out that nobody has broken any laws. There is absolutely nothing illegal about the firings; the U.S. Attorneys are political appointees, hired and fired at the President's will. However, just like in the Plame case, there is the appearance of misconduct, or at least political hardball; once again the Administration appears to be punishing people who cross their path or don't do their bidding.

Now, the Democrats have no problem with the notion of political payback: witness the abuse that Senator John Kerry heaped upon ambassadorial nominee Sam Fox for having the temerity to fund opposition to his presidential bid. Everyone is used to that sort of thing as just a part of the game. So why should we be shocked, shocked to find that the hiring and firing of U.S. Attorneys is somehow linked to political concerns?

In the Plame affair, the underlings dutifully obfuscated the role of the higher-ups in the political non-crimes. Scooter Libby was rewarded with a perjury conviction. Now it looks like the underlings have gotten the message; covering for your boss can put you in hot water, regardless of the legality of the underlying matter. So aides like Michael Battle and Monica Goodling are either invoking the Fifth Amendment or letting the blame roll right back uphill.

It's interesting to note that hardly anyone, either Republican or Democrat, is talking about the particular reasons these U.S. Attorneys are being let go. The real underlying political reasons for the dismissals are related to indictments of lawmakers; evidently these attorneys didn't pursue prosecution of certain Democrats when they could, or went ahead with prosecution of Republicans that perhaps they could have let slide. Perhaps they don't talk about it because it's complicated and involved and doesn't make for good sound bites. Or, more likely, they really don't want the public to witness how lawmakers abuse power themselves, and then use their power to deflect prosecution for their crimes. If the public really understood that, they would not be able to sustain any moral outrage. It's one thing when justice is undone by politics; but when we see that it's not a question of justice at all, but just a legal and political knife-fight between two parties, we tune out.

Who's winning?

On the plane home from Birmingham I saw the woman sitting next to me was reading The God Delusion: What's Wrong with Religion by Richard Dawkins. I was tempted to strike up a conversation, but I have such contempt for Dawkins' point of view on this subject that I wasn't sure I would be able to remain polite. I was also tempted to take out my rosary, just to provoke her, but that seemed counterproductive, too. Anyone who was reading Dawkins with so much interest would probably be someone either newly liberated from some tyrranous childhood faith, or someone so thoroughly atheistic that they could match Dawkins shrillness. Neither felt like much fun to talk to. So I just sat back and slept, and occasionally snuck a peak at what she was reading.

What surprises me is how often Dawkins uses words like "emergency" and "crisis" to describe the state of religious culture in the country today. If half the country was goose-stepping and saying "Sieg heil!" he could not have used stronger language to denounce it. As he tells it, we are on the verge of slipping into utter chaos and darkness because of these unenlightened idiots.

The funny thing is, the religious fundamentalists are saying exactly the same things. They do not see a world getting increasingly religious; they see a world becoming increasingly secular, and fear a downward slide into moral relativism and social anarchy. When I mentioned the article in USA Today about Americans' religious ignorance to my client (who was a church-going man), he had the typical response: "Is it any wonder the world is going to hell in a handbasket these days?"

So . . . who's winning? Is religion gaining ground, as so many articles in Time and the Wall Street Journal attest? Or is secular humanism carrying the day? My guess is that both sides must be dead-even in influence, because neither side is feeling particularly secure. The volume of the rhetoric is turned up across the board, because everyone senses that the country is teetering on a tipping point, and could go either way. And there may yet be a niche for a Third Way, if someone can articulate a vision of spirituality that transcends both literal-minded mythology and soulless rationality.

Pardon Libby

Scooter Libby was convicted of various forms of lying (making false statements, perjury, obstruction of justice), although it sounds like everyone, even the jurors who convicted him, were not very happy about it. Nobody can call it justice when one guy faces 25 years in prison for lying about something that ultimately was determined not to be a crime at all.

I understand the necessity of the whole concept of perjury. I know that we need to have strict penalties for not telling the truth on important matters. But it still feels like an abuse of power, when the only crime a special prosecutor can find is that someone got in his way.

I wonder how Libby feels about the whole situation. Clearly he is taking a bullet for the Cheney office, though we don't know if it was merely to avoid political embarrassment for the administration or to cover up something more dastardly. Does he feel like a bodyguard who falls in the line of duty? Are indictments of perjury merely an occupational hazard for a high-ranking administration official? Or does he resent having his life upended by an affair in which he had such a tangential role? Or maybe both? For that matter, I wonder how Cheney feels, having a close colleague take a hard and undeserved fall for his political benefit. (I have no special insight into the Vice President, but I do not assume, as many do, that he is a heartless super-villain.)

The Bush administration is famous for demanding unswerving loyalty from its staff. I wonder if they, in turn, will show an equal loyalty to them. Don't talk to me about political consequences. This administration is the lamest duck we've seen in some time. No doubt they will let the case go to appeal, hoping that the verdict will be overturned and spare them that particular political cross to bear. But soon, before the presidential race heats up too much, they should appease their conservative base and spare this scapegoat. If there's one thing George W. can do, it's blunt candor, and his supporters would only love him more if he looked into the camera and said, "I pardoned him because I thought he got a bum deal. He's a good man and he doesn't deserve this."

Appeasement, Then and Now

We watched the special features on the Remains of the Day DVD, on which actor Anthony Hopkins and novelist Kazuo Ishiguro speak quite intelligently about the pre-World War II desire for "peace in our time" and attempts to appease Hitler. Rather than doing the easy and natural thing -- deplore those silly saps, recite another "never again," and bask in how morally superior we are now -- both of them make it clear that hindsight is 20/20 and that none of us can really know how we would have acted in those times. They also pointed out that attempts to appease our enemies, in spite of it's general ineffectiveness, are still going on. They both mention Bosnia, so I suppose the featurette must have been shot ten years ago.

But it got me to thinking about our current situation in the Middle East. The commonly accepted liberal wisdom, swiftly becoming the commonly accepted mainstream wisdom, is that all this strife with Islamic fundamentalists is of our own making. If we just spoke with them, understood them, respected them, accepted them, then they wouldn't hate us so much and they'd want to be more like us. It's a cultural form of the strategy of appeasement: let's make nice, and maybe they won't kill us.

But Nick Cohen pointed out in Friday's Wall Street Journal ("An Upside Down World") that all the liberals in America and Europe who are rushing to defend Islam and show extra-careful regard for Muslim delegates are trapped in a contradiction, since those very delegates vehemently oppose everything they hold sacred: liberalism, secular humanism, and feminism. Those same smug liberals who assume they would sooner die than shake hands with Hitler are still seeking "diplomatic solutions" with foes whose ideologies are perhaps more morally repugnant than the Nazis'.

Ah, but them's fightin' words. Anyone who points out the fundamental contradictions in our values and the values of Muslim fundamentalists are deemed viscious hawks determined to foment a religious war. Still . . . at some point, even for liberals, our determined multiculturism must fail and give way to outrage. The Taliban was just dastardly enough that all the Western world could work up a good hate long enough to bomb them back to the Stone Age (which, admittedly, was not far to go in Afghanistan.)

I am actually not that hawkish, these days. Nobody is. How could they, what with our asses getting kicked in a war of questionable value? But I do think it's important to look back at history and recognize that the decision to fight is rarely an obvious one, at least at the time, and that it is possible for our enemies to take advantage of our lofty ideals.

Scooter What's-His-Face

The Onion may be a satirical newspaper, but it usually does a thorough job of checking its facts. A spoof of post-modernism is that much funnier when the author shows they really do know what post-modernism is about, amd what post-modernist professors are really like, before skewering it.

So I was surprised when today I discovered the first-ever factual error in an Onion feature. In their coverage of the Scooter Libby trial, the Onion states that he is "is on trial for identifying CIA agent Valerie Plame to the press." Well, no, actually he's on trial for perjury, for allegedly lying under oath about who leaked the name of Valerie Plame to the press. The person who really leaked the name is already known: Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state. He is charged with no crime, presumably because, as it turns out, Valerie Plame's identity wasn't that important (she had a desk job) nor was it particularly secret (lots of people knew about it and the CIA freely confirmed her identity when asked.) See the Wikipedia article for the gory details.

So, it would be more accurate to say: "Scooter Libby is on trial for allegedly lying about a non-coverup for a non-crime."

So why does The Onion's error bug me? (At least, enough to write about it on a Sunday morning?)

• I happen to know the real story, and feel smug about being right.
• I get to be morally indignant about how awful such confusions are, since they are exactly the same sort of logical fallacies that make people think Saddam Hussein had something to do with 9/11.
• I'm annoyed that I don't get to display my smugness and moral indignation directly to The Onion, since they have absolutely no feedback forms of any kind (no doubt because they got tired of unsolicited story ideas, and no we don't publish unsolicited material, and for God's sake it's just a humor site anyway, Jesus why don't you get a life?)
• Twenty years of reading Dorothy Rabinowitz's coverage of falsely accused people in the Wall Street Journal makes me especially sympathetic when someone seems to be getting a bum rap.

Shoe Salesmen of Nation's Capitol respond

At a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on a non-binding resolution that opposes Bush's plan for a military build-up in Bahgdad, Sen. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., said: ""I think all 100 senators should be on the line on this. ... If you want a safe job, go sell shoes."

Shoe salesmen from around the nation responded angrily to the Senator Hagel's comments in flood of letters, phone calls, and talk-radio commentaries. "Man, when was a $6-an-hour base plus commission considered a "safe" job?" said Ken Johnson, assistant sales manager at a PayLess Shoe Store in Alexandria, VA. "If I don't move enough of these Hush Puppies today, I could be out on my ass tomorrow."

"Ain' no senata wouldn't last one day in 'dis job," said Shaniqua Washington, a sales rep at the same store. "People can be real demandin', like, 'You don' have size 14 in camel suede finish? What is wrong wid you people?' And I'm like, 'Honey, what's on them shelves, dat's what we got.' It hard."

"Camel suede, my ass," she added.

Carlton Jones, a store manager for a Foot Locker store in downtown D.C, agrees: "You see that 'No Concealed Firearms on premises' sign on the door? That ain't just there for decoration, you know what I'm sayin'? You see them bars on the back windows? When a new shipment of [Air]Jordans come in . . . shit, I'd rather be in Baghdad."

"Well, maybe not Baghdad . . . maybe the north side of Anwar province or somethin'."

Shoe industry workers at all levels responded with equal ire. Colleen Hutchinson, vice-president of marketing for Adidas, told reporters: "It's a cut-throat market out there for high-end products. We're under constant pressure to innovate. Marketing budgets are astronomical, with a lot of high-risk placements . . . sometimes even Super Bowl ads. If Senator Hagel had said, 'Go sell laundry detergent,' now that I could understand. Life was easy when I worked at P&G. But shoes? The Senator is clearly out of touch with harsh realities of the private sector."

Spin Wars

Two instances of media spin hit me simultaneously yesterday.

1. My mother-in-law forwarded a vicious slander of Barack Obama that had been forwarded to her. The message tried to paint Obama as a closeted radical Muslim. I suppose it doesn't help that his middle name is "Hussein," which might as well be "Jones" in the Middle East but most American's only hear it as "evil guy." A quick check on snopes.com easily verified the truth: he's been active in a Christian church for the last twenty-five years and never said or did anything to indicate he ever considered himself a Muslim.
2. The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed from Paul A. Offit, citing a JAMA study that asserted that people who abstained from certain immunizations were putting their communities at much greater risk for certain diseases. I haven't been able to read the full text of the study to decide how much credence to give to it, but I found it rather irresponsible that neither Offit nor the Wall Street Journal disclosed his ties to the pharmaceutical industry -- that he is a consultant to Merck on the production of vaccines, that he has refused to disclose whether he is paid by Merck, and has a financial stake in the production of vaccines in the form of his patents. Of course, I didn't know this off the top of my head -- this basic information was available courtesy of a single Google search.

These two incidents show the acceleration of both knowledge and ignorance in the information age. The basest lies can shoot around the world in days . . . but individuals can validate that information just as easily, too. I am not so much concerned that individuals and media are generating spin; that has always been true and always will be true. What concerns me more is the fact that we are all becoming little publishers ourselves -- our capacity to send information or misinformation has become magnified. Journalists have an accepted standard for fact-checking, validation, and full-disclosure . . . but those standards have not disseminated to the broader culture.

I know journalists are often slamming the blogosphere for playing fast and loose with standards of reporting, but I am not just echoing the "you're not journalists so just shut up and listen to us" argument. I don't believe that a blogger, or even a person who innocently forwards an email to their friends, has to meet the same journalistic standards as CNN. But I wish the popular culture recognized that they ought to have some standard . . . and hold them responsible for it.

Everyday low respect for human dignity

The Wall Street Journal reported earlier this week that Wal-mart will begin rolling out to all its stores a new computerized scheduling system. Rather than working predictable shifts, the workers will now have to list the times when they will be "available" to work, and then they will be called in to work based on whether the computer predicts they are needed. Wal-mart asserts (probably correctly) that the new system will allow for faster checkout times and a better customer experience, because the stores will always have the right number of associates available to help. The workers, and all the anti-Wal-mart organizations shilling for the unions, are pointing out that the change will create vast disruptions in workers' lives, because they will never be able to predict their schedules or their income.

After having read The Wal-Mart Effect, I can see how this system is a classic Wal-mart move. Wal-mart, of course, is always looking for inefficiencies to wring out of their business and the businesses of their vendors. Sometimes they remove inefficiencies that are true inefficiencies -- for instance, telling all the deoderant makers to stop packing their products in little cardboard boxes. In cases like that, everyone wins: Wal-Mart gets more product on the shelves, the vendors save money on packaging, millions of acres of forest are saved from being turned into paper, and the customer ultimately gets a cheaper product. (The company that printed and produced the little cardboard boxes probably wasn't happy, but we can hardly blame Wal-Mart for that.)

However, there is another way for Wal-Mart to remove inefficiencies from their business: make them someone else's problem. For instance, Wal-Mart saves money on sending orders to its vendors . . . by making the vendor pay for the overnight delivery. Wal-Mart gets free market research for its products . . . again, by making the vendors do all the work. Of course, in a free market, all those vendor companies doing business with Wal-Mart are entering the business relationship freely, and, as one executive put it, "we're all big boys." The vendors might not like Wal-Mart wringing the nickels out of their hides, but they accept it in order to have the volume that Wal-Mart can provide.

Now Wal-Mart is turning that same "make-it-someone-else's-problem" approach on their single largest fixed cost: labor. Wal-Mart has been staunchly anti-union because their margins simply don't allow for expensive labor. With a computerized system handling scheduling, Wal-mart liberates an army of middle managers from tedious scheduling, and they also turn a fixed cost into a variable cost. The guys in Bentonville must be rubbing their hands together . . . what a spectacular way to bring new efficiency to the very center of their operations.

But the employees are not exactly the free agents that the vendors are. Most of the vendors have other channels besides Wal-Mart that carry at least two-thirds of their volume. The workers at Wal-Mart are . . . well, they wouldn't be working at Wal-Mart if they had anywhere else to work. And Wal-Mart can't lean on them much harder on wages -- those are already about as low as they can go -- so they are taking away what they can take away: their lives. Under the new regime, the worker could never (efficiently) schedule childcare, because they never know if they will be working or not. One could argue that the employees do have a choice: they can decide for themselves when to make themselves available. But the very efficiency that Wal-Mart aims for with the system guarantees they will not be working as many hours as they were before. They will only be able to get the hours they need if they make themselves available for night and weekend work, and management has strongly recommended they make themselves available for a weekend shift "if at all possible." And it's not likely they could fill those gaps in their work week with some other part-time job.

I am not a knee-jerk Wal-Mart basher. I like efficiencies. I like free markets, and occasionally I even like Wal-Mart low prices. But this system feels like a naked attempt by a corporation to steal away every vestige of human dignity from its employees. There is absolutely no way someone could even conceive of such a system and consider themselves to be "pro-family." The very nature of the system is geared to wring an efficiency directly out of the personal lives of the workers.

I am especially not a knee-jerk "let's-regulate-an-industry" kind of guy, either. I don't think one can outlaw what Wal-Mart is doing. It may be that the net effect is that Wal-mart runs its stores entirely with part-time employees, because no one will be able to afford to work full-time for Wal-mart without sacrificing their entire lives on the altar of low prices. The unions, in fact, see this as the entire point of the new system. And I haven't made up my mind yet as to whether that goal is morally wrong, or just morally repugnant. Either way, I am inclined to vote with my dollars . . . and hope that more people, those more fortunate than the Wal-Mart workforce, will do the same.

Status quo on the status quo

At the end of James Hall's series on philosophy of religion, he spent one or two sessions trying to justify religion's beneficial role in society. I think he was concerned that religious thought would be perceived as always being "the bad guy," the force of arbitrary authority that was always standing in the way of "progress" towards more enlightened ways of thinking. To counterbalance that impression, he discussed the "priestly" versus the "prophetic" traditions in religion: one tradition that tried to preserve the "one truth", and the other that overthrows the status quo and calls for renewal.

I was totally with Hall through most of this -- yes, obviously, you need a dynamic tension between the forces of stability and the forces of change. However, I found that he was giving away his own liberal bias by the way he was framing up the question. To hear him tell it, the prophetic voices were always the good guys, and the priestly traditionalists were always the bad guys. He never really commented on all those times that prophets called for change and were wrong. He doesn't comment on them, because of course he doesn't consider those people to be prophets; no, they are crackpots or charletans. He does not dare call it "heresy," because that would make him one of those bad, bad traditionalists who prevent progress. No, when someone proposes a new, bad thing in the name of religion, those people are just obviously wrong, don't you see?

In fact, there are no conservatives or progressives. Different people believe different things, and the labels conservative and liberal merely tell us what direction they happen to be pushing at the moment. Sometimes the political liberals are calling for change (e.g. gay marriage) and sometimes they are calling for things to stay exactly as they are (e.g. Roe vs. Wade, no school vouchers).

You can always tell what side people are on, just by seeing how they frame up the language of change. If you like the way things are, you call it "stability", "security", "order", "due process", "treasured traditions", "our way of life." If you don't like the way things are, you call it "the status quo", "repressive", "intractable", "hidebound". If you want things to change, you call change "progress." If you don't want things to change, you call change "anarchy".

Self-delusion or racism?

NPR did an informal poll to see whether people thought America is ready to have a black President of the United States. The results were interesting: a majority of whites thought the country was ready, but a majority of blacks thought it was not.

There are a number of possible ways to interpret these results:

1. Whites are hopelessly self-deluded about their collective ability to accept leadership from a black person. They like to think that they aren't guided by prejudice, but when push comes to shove they really are.
2. Whites are outright duplicitous about their ability to accept black leadership, because who wants to admit on National Public Radio that they doubt a black candidate could win, and risk being branded a racist by all their NPR-listening friends?
3. Whites are generally over racism, but the blacks are not. Whites listen to Barack Obama and hear a genuine centrist candidate they like. Blacks listen to Barack Obama and all they can think is, "He's not black enough, and can I trust a black candidate who is so well liked by the whites?" MLK's vision of a truly color-blind society may not be what they really hoped for.
4. Blacks are self-deluded or duplicitous about how much racism exists in America, or at least by how much effect it has on their lives. If a black man does win the presidency, how will they ever be able to claim victim status again?

Or, maybe, all of the above.

This way of life

Last week I heard no less than three news stories that cited people mourning the loss of "their way of life":

• Aging residents of Shanghai lamented the tearing down of their old neighborhoods, with houses designed with communal kitchens and tight-knit communities
• Farm-Aid organizers, including Willie Nelson, bemoaned that the independent American farmer was becoming a thing of the past
• Bushmen who had been expelled from their native lands in the Kalahari Desert were allowed to return to continue their hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

(And let's not pile on every administration press release and stump speech that reminds us that we have to defeat radical fundamentalist terrorism because "they hate our way of life and want to destroy it.")

I have always been a little perplexed by the glorification of "the way of life." Obviously it means a lot of different things to different people, and its broad sweep tends to allow for all kinds of equivocation. It conflates sacred ideals and beliefs with the accidental characteristics of daily life.

When I hear stories about an economic displacement -- family farmers or Maine lobstermen no longer able to make a living -- I feel bad for the people who are displaced, but it doesn't really inspire an genuine mourning in me. What, exactly, was lost? People used to have a certain job, and do it a certain way, and it was fun. Now that way is gone, and everyone who used to do it will do something else. Did you think that "way of life" would last forever? Do you think the Neanderthals grieved for the passing of their "way of life" as youngsters started getting into agriculture instead of hunting all the time, and building huts instead of living in caves? Such attachments to livelihood, while undeniably real, are purely personal and sentimental. It feels like the world is ending . . . but it's not.

Cultural displacements -- the loss of a native language, the dying of old traditions -- fare a little better in my mind . . . but only a little. People who love the stories and songs in an old language will mourn their passing. But just like the passing of an individual person, it is a death that is inevitable, a loss that is strictly personal. No language, story, or song will live forever, any more than a human being. And while it may be a tragedy for the native Urkuskian, that his traditional stories will no more be told, I don't feel all that deprived. It is someone else's loss, not mine.

So what, if anything, does matter in the "way of life" that everyone is so eager to preserve? The only thing that really matters to me is philosophic principles, ethical ideals and cultivated character traits. If, when you say that "the terrorists want to end our way of life," you mean, "they want to destroy personal freedom, democratic government, capitalist free markets, and respect for the individual," well, then I guess I'm on board to fight them. But if you mean, "they want to take away our shopping malls and 200 channels of television and internet porn and cubicle jobs" . . . um, well, if they wipe that out I won't mourn too much. Some "ways of life" deserve to die.

The Life of Gifts

A Chinese maxim states: "If you are angry at someone, give them a gift. It is impossible to be angry while being generous." I have, empirically, found this to be true; an act of generosity, even undertaken mechanically, will often change they way you feel. Because it is freely undertaken, a gift has a life of its own, above and beyond the mere transfer of property or service, a psychic significance for both giver and recipient. A dun letter from my kid's school put it quite well: "Paying for things is how meet our needs and obligations . . . but giving is what gives us meaning."

I heard on the news this morning that the incoming Congress is taking a more serious look at limiting gifts to lawmakers, especially in the wake of a party change-over after a series of scandals. I thought about the whole practice of gift-giving in our plutocratic . . . aHEM I mean democratic system. It always struck me as odd that the Washington power-elite were so scrutinized for pocketing gifts on the order of hundreds or thousands of dollars, while the captains of industry were swallowing spoils that were orders of magnitude greater. If politicians were so powerful, why weren't they getting richer at the public trough?

To understand it, you have to understand the psychology of gift-receiving. The Washington fatcats did not set about acquiring power to get money. Usually, it's the opposite -- they traffick in money to acquire power. And the psychic measure of power is in how many people need you, and how much they need you. A senator might not be richest man in the world, but he is the best friend of everyone he meets. Rich men usually pay for the privilege to be so sought after, through their philanthropy.

And hence the gifts. Lawmakers are swayed by gifts, but not just by the material value. It's the psychic payoff that gives it punch. It doesn't even matter if it's just a lobbyist picking up the lunch tab -- for just a moment, that lawmaker is a King, receiving tribute.