Positive Liberty

Every so often, a clever little idea comes along and brightens my entire outlook. The “No True Scotsman” fallacy is one of them. I encourage you to apply it, um, liberally. Or conservatively if you prefer. I quote from the endlessly entertaining Wikipedia:

No true Scotsman is a term coined by Antony Flew in his 1975 book Thinking About Thinking. It refers to an argument which takes this form:

Argument: “No Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.”
Reply: “But my friend Angus likes sugar with his porridge.”
Rebuttal: “Ah yes, but no true Scotsman puts sugar on his porridge.”

This form of argument is a fallacy if the predicate (”putting sugar on porridge”) is not actually contradictory to the accepted definition of the subject (”Scotsman”), or if the definition of the subject is silently adjusted after the fact to make the rebuttal work.

The beauty of this little argument is that it can be used to define oneself out of any problem of one’s political movement whatsoever, and retroactively to boot. Whenever you find someone on “your” side of an argument, and suddenly he’s behaving badly, well… He’s not a true Scotsman anymore. The page I’ve quoted references liberals, conservatives, and Christians, though they certainly aren’t alone.

It’s so much easier not belonging to a movement. That way, I’m the only true Scotsman. Self-serving? You bet. But at least I’m honest. Incidentally, I’m adding Thinking About Thinking to my wish list.

I’ve been out of the news loop for a while now. When that happens, I write silly stories instead of serious blog entries.

On a perfectly predictable Monday, the mighty sorceress Desdemona Lok embarked on a new project: She would prove that the cosmos was indeed perfectly predictable. Her hypothesis was that the universe held nothing but atoms and the void, with maybe a little energy thrown in for good measure. Free will was a mere fantasy, and Desdemona was going to prove it.

As a corollary to her hypothesis, Desdemona held that a suitably informed sage ought to be able to predict all future events, and she had come up with a diabolically clever way to test that proposition. Not that her own divination skills were all that great; far from it. Desdemona’s forte was in fire and smoke, but she knew another who undoubtedly possessed the skills that she lacked. Desdemona put on her turban, unrolled her magic carpet, and set out for the Omphalan Oracle Katrina VI.

Like all Omphalan Oracles, Katrina VI was a particularly sensitive soul; she also never spoke a lie. It was not merely that she despised lying, although she did. Katrina was also utterly incapable of telling any sort of falsehood whatsoever. The moment a dishonest proposition rose to her mind, the air would catch in her virgin throat, and she found herself altogether speechless. In this way, anyone who came to the Oracle would be guaranteed of a true answer, even if it wasn’t the one they were hoping for.

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Now as any intellectual historian knows, the world has been in torment about the question of free will and determinism for ages. Theologians have been particularly vexed. If man has free will, then could he defy the will of the One Great God? Perhaps, and yet the alternative is unpalatable too: In a deterministic universe, good and evil would vanish, for no one would really have control over their actions. Even the One Great God might not have a free will, and He would make a rather pathetic Deity to follow if such were the case.

Desdemona Lok knew quite a few theologians, and she hoped that her forthcoming proof would sorely vex them indeed. She did not know any gods, however, and thus she could not possibly know just how much the gods themselves were vexed at her diabolically clever idea. They gathered in the heavens for a mighty conference, and there they discussed matters on which no theologian had ever dared to speculate.

“What ever is the matter?” asked a young, worried god. He nervously stroked his long white beard.

“We can’t have anyone solving the problem of free will and determinism. It would ruin us,” said a pragmatic, middle-aged god.

“Ruin us how?” asked the young one.

“Let me explain,” said a crafty, nearly-forgotten old god. “For centuries, men have doubted whether their actions really are their own, and their doubt has worked in our favor. But any certainty in either direction would hurt us.

“If all men thought themselves to be creatures of perfect determinism, then they would give up on prayer. Wishing for something won’t make it happen in a deterministic universe, and belief in determinism would mean that people would stop praying to us.” The crafty old god blinked her serpentine eyes and continued.

“But if men thought themselves to be creatures of perfect free will, then they would also stop coming to the gods. After all, if free will does exist, then men can create goodness all by themselves, just by willing it. Free will means that people can solve their own problems without our help. In such a world, divine inspiration wouldn’t be necessary at all.

“So long as man hangs in doubt, neither perfectly resigned nor perfectly free, the gods will seem vital to his future. And thus we have sown through every religious and moral tradition a salutary doubt–salutary for us, of course. We preach that the will is great, but that it sometimes still needs a higher power. Or we preach that the will is depraved, and that we must always guide it to goodness. Sometimes we preach that the gods are all-powerful, and that men are hopelessly subject to our dictates. Other times, we preach that man is all-powerful, and that he need only join the gods to consummate his destiny. In short, we preach all kinds of self-contradictory, self-serving claptrap, and they’ve eaten it up, bless their gullible hearts.

“Nothing have we muddled more carefully than the question of free will and determinism, for if mankind fully believed in one or the other, he would no longer hedge his bets with prayer. Several of the newer religions–she flashed her nictitating membranes at the young god–have done particularly well on this score. They’ve somehow managed to preach every single contradictory doctrine at once, and they’ve become remarkably popular by doing so. But put an end to the confusion, and our game is up.”

“No more burnt offerings that are pleasing to the LORD,” said the young god. He was even more worried than before.

“Exactly,” said old one. “But do not fear. I will supply the Oracle with a set of answers that will solve the problem entirely.”

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On a perfectly random Tuesday, Mark the Elf awoke and found himself perfectly constrained to demonstrate the existence of free will. At his favorite tavern the night before, Mark had run into an odd little gnome who had insisted that everything happens for a reason. It was the most foolish thing Mark had ever heard.

Now Mark had been hitting the mead pretty hard that night, and thus he did not hesitate to make plain his views both a bit too loudly and a bit too seriously. The gnome turned out to be the philosopher Yohanganian the Wily, and to make matters worse, at the next table a Justicar of the Velmark had overheard the entire conversation. Before the argument was half finished, the justicar had drawn up a contract specifying the terms of the bet. Something about the justicar’s black, spiky, blood-tipped armor had convinced Mark that he’d best sign the contract if he valued his life.

Mark now had a mere seven days to prove the existence of free will. If he succeeded, Yohanganian would owe him ten thousand crowns of good Velmark silver. If he failed, then the wily philosopher would get to try his hand at Velmark bankruptcy law, for Mark the Elf had not a single silver crown to his name. Destitute and nearly hopeless, Mark set out for the Omphalan Oracle Katrina VI.

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Desdemona Lok arrived first. The Omphalos lay before her; many believed it to be the very center of the limitless universe, without troubling themselves as to how such a thing was possible. In form, the Omphalos was a mighty gold-plated dome supported by a circle of marble columns. Under the dome there was a deep cone-shaped depression in the ground. A staircase wound its way around the pit until it descended into a circle of unimaginable blackness at the very bottom.

Desdemona lowered her flying carpet, wiped the bugs from the windshield, and folded the whole thing neatly into her handbag. She picked her way gingerly down the stairs and noted with a shudder that the underside of the dome was decorated with a grand mosaic of a slain serpentine god. On reaching the circle of blackness at the bottom, she found that it was neither so dark nor so mysterious as it had seemed from above. The stairs continued but a short distance into a small, rough, roundish chamber whose floor was made of the most unceremonious packed earth imaginable. A young woman sat on the floor, clad in a simple homespun tunic.

“Well?” asked the Omphalan Oracle Katrina VI.

“I imagine you must know why I am here.”

“Indeed I do.”

“Then here is my question: If I were to ask you to predict all future events, would you be able to do it, if given sufficient time and information?”

Katrina paused for a moment and then produced from her tunic a stack of neatly-folded parchments. The wax seals on each parchment bore an ornate capital O. They were thick, opaque, and completely unreadable until the seal was broken.

“Open these one at a time, when you feel the time is right–but not before.”

Desdemona took the stack of parchments into her hands. The seals on the parchment were cold and hard; the Oracle had evidently been expecting her. Immediately she opened the first one.

I knew that you would do that.

“A cheap trick,” said Desdemona. “It proves nothing.” She opened the second one.

Patience, my child, patience. The answer won’t come immediately.

“Are you satisfied with my powers now? Or would you like to test me again?” asked Katrina.

“If I opened it right away, then the answer would come just as quickly–no patience required,” said Desdemona. “And that would prove that you can’t predict everything. But if I wait, if I exercise patience, then you would only have one more successful prophecy to your credit–and I’d have nothing.”

“One might also imagine that the answer you seek isn’t on the final parchment at all.”

Desdemona hesitated over the third piece of folded parchment. Her mind reeled. She hadn’t gotten the straight answer she’d wanted. Now, rather than her testing Katrina, quite the reverse was happening. Could Desdemona–of her own free will–outwit the Oracle? But if she did outwit the Oracle, then wouldn’t it prove the existence of free will, the very thing Desdemona was trying to discredit? Did the Oracle even want to be outwitted? Did it matter?

Quick, she asked herself, what would I do if I lacked all free will? She had no answer.

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At that moment, Mark the Elf ambled down the stairs.

“Good morning,” said the Oracle. “I’ve been expecting you.”

“Of course… I suppose you have,” said Mark. “Should I, um, wait?”

“Don’t be silly. Just ask your question. No one should have to hide from the truth.”

“Alright… See, I got in this argument the other day, where I was saying that everyone has free will. I don’t know why, but sometimes I do stupid things when I’m drunk, and it’s like I’ve got no control over them.”

Desdemona pursed her lips in envy.

“But deep down, I really think that whatever I do, I’m ultimately the one who’s actually doing it. It’s my decision, not anyone else’s. Sure, I can be influenced, maybe, but not controlled, at least not when it matters. And… well.. I know this sounds like a big demand, but I was wondering if you could prove the existence of free will for me. I’ll make a big contribution if you can do it. If you can’t, though, I’m probably going to end up a slave or worse, because I was stupid and made a bet in front of a justicar. Like I said, sometimes I just lose control.”

Katrina sighed and gave Mark a stack of parchments.

“Do I, like, open these?”

“Open them when you feel the time is right.”

Mark thought for a moment. He couldn’t escape the sense that he’d somehow been outwitted. He did not notice that Desdemona was watching him with undivided attention.

“No time like the present,” he said. He opened the first parchment and read aloud.

“I knew that you would do that?! What kind of lousy prophecy is that?” Desdemona giggled. Mark looked at the Oracle with a fierce, unblinking stare that he never knew he’d had within him.

“Well I think you didn’t know it,” Mark said.

In all honesty, Katrina wasn’t prepared for a challenge.

She hadn’t the faintest idea what to make of the parchments or of their contents, for she had not written them. The truth was, the old serpentine god–long forbidden from setting foot in the Omphalos–had secretly sent the parchments by celestial courrier just moments before Desdemona arrived. Katrina had not yet divined their contents, for she was not about to risk the serpent-god’s ire. After all, there was no sense in stirring up old rivalries. Katrina remained silent for a moment; she hoped it would enhance the gravity of what she was about to say.

“What do you mean?” Despite the pause, it didn’t sound grave at all.

“You didn’t know it, and that proves I’ve got free will,” said Mark, bolder than before. Katrina paused again. She was about to say that she did know it, but the lie caught in her throat and all she could manage was a gentle wheeze.

“Now let me ask you one other thing.” Strictly speaking, the Code of the Omphalan Oracle dictated that Katrina could answer but one question per person per lifetime. But strictly speaking, she had already broken that rule with Mark at least twice in the last two minutes, and Katrina always did what she thought was best–even if it sometimes meant breaking the rules.

Mark wasn’t thinking very strictly either, and he continued.

“See, I don’t believe this nonsense. If I’m going to be sold into slavery over a stupid parlor trick, then what do we need these for?” He was still holding a parchment, and so was Desdemona. Katrina gave a dramatic pause, a device that she was by now grossly overusing.

“The Oracle’s work is done. Go in peace.” She dearly hoped that they would.

Mark and Desdemona looked at one another.

“Well?” asked Desdemona “I see you’ve still got one scroll left. There’s no time like the present, especially if you’re going to be a slave soon. Open it up!” Needless to say, Desdemona dreaded having to open her own scroll first.

Mark broke the seal on his scroll and read it silently:

There is nothing in the universe but atoms and the void.

“Well?” asked Desdemona. Not being an Oracle, Mark told a lie.

“It says that I’m right, and that free will does exist. What does yours say?”

Desdemona wasn’t an Oracle, but she wasn’t born yesterday, either.

“You’re a liar; I’m sure of it. Just to show you, I am going to open my own parchment and read it aloud.”

Desdemona opened the scroll and her look of triumph evaporated. The scroll read Do what you think is best.

“I’ll trade ya,” said Mark.

“You’ve got a deal.” Katrina smiled.

And so, of their own free wills, Mark the Elf and Desdemona Lok took the perfectly contradictory worldviews that have come down to us from ancient times, rearranged them as necessary, and made the best of a bad situation. Desdemona showed her new scroll to the theologians, who grumbled and gnashed their teeth. Mark took his scroll back to Yohanganian the Wily to prove the existence of free will; the philosopher grudgingly paid him ten thousand silver crowns. Yohanganian then declared bankruptcy under Gnomerican law, which is far kinder than that of the Velmark but also a great deal more shameful.

The dilemma of free will and determinism went unsolved, and the Omphalan Oracle Katrina VI went back to doing what she thought was best.

Says Michael Newdow:

[I object to] the state forcing my daughter to place her hand over her heart and say her father is wrong…

Go to church with your mother. I love the idea of her being exposed to everything. But I want my religion to be taken into account.

What can I say? He’s a man after my own heart. I have been an atheist for years, and I stopped saying the words “under God” in the pledge of allegiance when I was sure that I could no longer affirm God’s existence. Like he does, I recognize that other people have other paths to follow, and I would never deny anyone the opportunity to think for themselves about the Really Big Questions. It’s an awful lot, though, to ask a third-grader to take a stand that separates her from her peers; even worse is asking her to swear that her father is wrong about something she can’t even understand yet. Is this the price we must pay for national unity? Surely there has to be a better way.

Now comes Maggie Gallagher, who says:

America came into being because more than 200 years ago, a group of men wagered their lives — and ours — on the existence of a law higher than the written law, those laws duly passed by parliament and the king stripping Americans of their rights to self-governance. “Under God” serves as a reminder that in pledging allegiance to the United States, we are not asking our citizens to surrender their allegiance to an even higher authority.

In 1951, the Knights of Columbus inserted the phrase “under God” after “We pledge allegiance” at their own meetings to underscore the difference between a free nation with a limited government and a totalitarian system that asked its citizens to make the state their highest allegiance.

And this statement is surely a piece of pretzel logic. When we pledge allegiance–as it now stands–then we are asking our citizens to give their allegiance both to the state and to an even higher power, for we pledge to a United States that is “under God,” and the word “under” has no sensible meaning here save “under the authority of.” Further, adding the words “under God” may distinguish the United States from communist countries, but these words in no way guarantee a limited government: Theocracies have always been among the worst offenders on that score, easily on par with the communists. The current pledge is deeply flawed, because it declares the United States to be a monotheistic country, potentially even a theocratic one. Maggie Gallagher, though, is so satisfied with this state of affairs that she obscures the issue in the hopes that others won’t think too hard about it.

And yet she does have a point: The United States government is not and should not be the supreme authority in the life of any good citizen; the government indeed should be limited, and it has no proper business whatsoever in a great many of our affairs.

A dedication to liberty and justice, though–not faith in one God–should be the limiting principle of our government. Liberty and justice are higher values than the government itself, for they are the transcendent values that make all other values obtainable. These, if anything, are what we should be “under,” and atheists can be under them just like Christians. We may differ about the source of our guiding principles and even differ on their interpretation at times, but the pledge should be a statement of those things on which all citizens absolutely must agree. The belief in one God, neither more nor less, is not one of the necessary elements for American citizenship.

Some commentators–I’ve only cited two of the best–have expressed doubts about forcing children to recite a pledge that they usually can’t understand yet. They’re right, of course, and it’s even sillier that these children must pledge allegiance every single day, as if to make sure that communist infiltrators haven’t reached them between one school day and the next. This endlessly repetitive ritual robs the pledge of all real meaning.

It also robs the pledge of a genuine use that it might have as a real patriotic ritual: Why not reserve the pledge as an act that we perform at those times when we know in advance that we’re about to cause some acrimony? Many public hearings and meetings open with the pledge, arguably for just this reason. Debates, judicial proceedings, and athletic competitions should probably start out with the pledge, too, as a reminder for all involved that everyone here remains an American, no matter what happens. The pledge ought to be a way of saying that we may disagree in our opinions and passions, but that these things are secondary. The unity of the nation, its republican character, its inclusiveness, and the overall causes of liberty and justice are always more important.

Like I said: an umbrella, not a shoehorn.

If it were up to me, I’d have NPR in one headphone, conservative talk radio in the other, and an IV drip of caffeine in my arm. I’d get an XML feed that would scan my eyes and scroll down just as quickly as I read. This setup would leave my hands entirely free, and I’d be blogging every single thing that came my way. With only a few more adjustments, I’d never have to stop.

Unfortunately, it won’t be that way this week. The Gay Men’s Chorus of Washington, DC is putting on a production of Bye, Bye Birdie, and I’ll be working in the stage crew. The show should be great fun, but it will definitely take a lot of my time.

I’ve got other stories, articles, and the like on the way, though, so if you don’t hear a lot from me, I’d urge you to look at some of the links I posted in The Other Barbarism. There’s a lot of interesting material to be found there.

History is full of ideas and practices that seem barbaric by present-day standards. Human sacrifice, witchcraft, slavery, and the treatment of women as chattel all come to mind. Professional historians, though, aren’t supposed to call anything barbaric. Yet it’s not because we’re moral relativists. Quite the contrary: We’re positively obsessed with our own moral judgments. Just look at how opinionated academics are, and you will know that we can’t possibly be moral relativists.

The reason we avoid passing such judgments about the past is simple. It isn’t that we somehow approve of witchcraft trials or slavery; we despise these like everyone else, and anyone who claims that an academic can’t condemn the Holocaust is making a strawman argument. But merely calling something awful does not do much to explain a bad idea’s past appeal, nor can an epithet explain how a given “barbaric” practice actually operated in the times and worldviews that it did. Calling the past barbaric is often the truth, but it’s always an analytical dead end.

What about calling a current practice barbaric? Now there is the very engine of modern political change! To call something in today’s world barbaric is a profound statement about past, present and future, and it takes a lot of guts to make that claim.

Imagine I had to pick one instance where our conventional wisdom is wrong, and about which the future will think us superstitious or worse. My readers probably know that I would choose the way that we now treat same-sex love. I firmly believe that in the future, love and marriage will know no gender lines. So far, so good.

Now suppose that I had to pick another idea about which our present conventional wisdom is also entirely wrong. With only a little more hesitation, I would choose the war on drugs. I believe that the future will consider us utterly ignorant in the way we now treat the so-called crime of drug use. I believe that as little as one hundred years from now, intelligent people will have put the criminalization of drug use up on that same dusty intellectual shelf where we now place apartheid.

I believe that the future will have a far more nuanced view of drugs, treating the recreational and/or spiritual use of cannabis, psilocybin mushrooms, and peyote as a generally safe and often quite valid form of life enrichment. The future may or may not say the same about all non-addictive recreational drugs in general, but these three at least have a long history of safe human use.

I strongly suspect that the future will treat the use of addictive drugs like cocaine and heroin as a grave health problem but not as a crime. The future will look at individuals who spent time in jail for marijuana as victims of a justice system gone awry; it will look at imprisoning a heroin addict much as we now would look at imprisoning someone for alcohol abuse: These people have done something dangerous and unhealthy, but what they really need is a cure, not a supplementary punishment.

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The economic, moral, and legal case for ending the war on drugs is remarkably strong. Organizations and individuals as diverse as the CATO Institute, the Green Party, former governors Jesse Ventura of Minnesota and Gary Johnson of New Mexico, and former Baltimore mayor Kurt Schmoke, have all argued that marijuana ought to be legal and that the entire drug war ought to be radically reconsidered. In 1972, Richard Nixon assembled the Shafer Commission, a panel of drug experts that concluded against prohibition, much to Nixon’s own surprise. His reasons for dismissing them were hardly noble to say the least: He speculated that marijuana was part of a plot by Jews, communists, homosexuals, and Catholics to overthrow the United States. Paranoid? Yes, but it worked.

Nixon began the wholesale demonization of marijuana that lasts to this day; with or without Nixon’s bizarre racist theories, now one can only pass for an expert on drugs by toeing the prohibitionist line. And yet no corner of the political spectrum has a monopoly on the case for legalization; indeed, the extremes tend to agree with one another while the center doesn’t budge. The call for legalization comes from the far left and the far right, from libertarians, multiculturalists, tribalists, and even Christians. I encourage you to read them, but what I want to talk about is the argument for prohibition itself, the one that everyone usually takes for granted.

It began with a panic. The United States first criminalized marijuana as a way to arrest Mexican immigrants, who were virtually the only ones using it in the early 20th century. It was said that marijuana produced a “reefer madness” that could turn people into violent, sex-crazed and irresponsible maniacs; the prohibitionists even claimed it could give people almost superhuman powers: “Under the influence of this weed they have enormous strength… it will take several men to handle one man while under ordinary circumstances one man could handle him with ease.”

Does this sound familiar? It’s virtually the same argument that has been used against every criminalized drug ever since. Take a population that people mistrust already: Mexicans, Asians, hippies, blacks, ravers, homosexuals. Find a substance that some of them like to use: marijuana, opium, LSD, crack, ecstasy, crystal meth. Associate the one with the other as much as you can. Suggest that the drug makes these dangerous people into what they are. The drug is a gateway into a degenerate lifestyle, as we can see by the examples of all of these unfortunate groups. The drug lies waiting for your children, and if you’re not careful, they will grow up to be just like the Mexicans, the Asians, the hippies…

It does not matter that these drugs’ physiological effects are as far removed from one another as aspirin and Prozac. It doesn’t matter that only some of them present serious physical dangers. It does not matter that the initial hype is almost always overblown. Remember when it was said that ecstasy caused brain damage? That, too, has been refuted, as have many myths about the dangers of drugs. But the fear is what matters most. The fear gets big media attention, while the quiet retractions go unnoticed.

The fear outlasts the science, because in every single case–in every single case–the fear of a drug, and the national moral panic that results, is based on a xenophobia. This xenophobia demands not that we seek treatment for drug problems, but that we hide those problems as far away from “normal” society as possible. Usually we do it by imprisoning those who use drugs, and anyone who calls for anything less is automatically on the side of the bad guys.

Of course, not everyone who favors drug criminalization has such prejudices. But what about the irrational fear of those who have used drugs? It seems a lot of the old anxieties have come home to roost in the war on drugs. Don’t most people agree that they are a danger to civilization in themselves? And yet drug users are far more common than we usually think.

Americans ought to know better: Over 70 million of them–nearly one in three–have used marijuana. The real effects of marijuana are the diametric opposites of the horrible properties that first led to prohibition. Marijuana almost always makes people calm, passive, and introspective. Some people say it raises the sex drive, but most say the opposite. Overdose on marijuana is physically impossible; marijuana has only scant addictive potential, certainly far less than nicotine or alcohol. The only way it makes people more Mexican is by making them crave Mexican food.

Despite all that we now know, our policies remain essentially the same as in the days of reefer madness. If anything, they are even harsher. Criminalization serves as the cover that we use to avoid answering the harder questions of how our society ought to engage with the real problems of responsible use and addiction. Rather than look for that distinction, rather than even ask whether some substances should perhaps treated differently from others, we take the easy route of putting everyone in prison.

In 2001, an estimated 723,627 people were arrested for marijuana violations in the United States. In the same year there were 246,100 prisoners in state prisons and 78,501 prisoners in federal prisons solely for nonviolent drug-related offenses. They constituted 55% of the federal prison population and 20% of the state prison population. Our prisons are operating at far beyond their designed capacity, a problem that could be solved overnight by releasing all those who do not belong there in the first place.

It’s hard to consider seriously the proposition that we are now keeping hundreds of thousands in prison for no greater crime than having a health problem. It’s even harder to think that many of them are in prison simply because they like a different kind of fun than the rest of us. We’d much prefer to think that we’ve done it for a reason: We have interrupted hundreds of thousands of lives and broken up just as many families. We have made it difficult or impossible for these people ever to become productive members of society again. We have denied them future employment and even student loans. We must have done it for a reason. But ultimately, to prevent these people from ruining their lives with drugs, we have ruined their lives–with the war on drugs.

Above all, we must consider whether the cost of the drug war is not greater than the benefits we get out of it. Is the drug war worth keeping more than three hundred thousand people in prison? Is it worth at least $31 billion a year? Is it worth the millions of law enforcement hours that could be better spent on murder, robbery, rape, or terrorism?

But surely drug addicts need to spent a short time in prison to learn the errors of their ways, no? Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. Many people think that prison will reform the people who are put there, but the reverse is actually true: Past prison sentences are often the best predictor of future prison sentences. Worse, prison seldom does anything to combat the problem of drug addiction. Slightly fewer than ten percent of prisoners in state prisons get drug treatment, and drug offenders are commonly rearrested for the same “offense.” The Sentencing Project has concluded that “The high number of drug offenders being rearrested for the same charge demonstrates that drug crimes are qualitatively different than property or violent crimes.”

They’re right: Of these three types of crime, only two are real. But there is a monstrous difficulty in admitting that the status quo has drifted into a horrible wrong. Promising efforts are indeed being made toward implementing drug treatment plans within the prison system, but then one must ask: Why do these people need prison in the first place? A far better setting for drug treatment would be at home, among family and community, rather than surrounded by criminals.

Rather than admit the mistake and correct it, by far the easiest course of action is to conclude that we still aren’t trying hard enough to win the war on drugs. And thus every so often, someone calls for a further crackdown. Getting tough is all that mainstream politicians usually want, because getting tough wins elections. It’s simple, direct, and sounds impressively masculine. It doesn’t matter that “getting tough” sometimes means taking medicine away from sick people. Toughness is what we want to hear; it makes us think that all the arrests, all the years spent in prison, all the lives wasted, and all the billions of dollars spent are going to fight a grand, glorious battle for the soul of America itself.

Many government agencies owe their existence to the war on drugs, and these groups have little or no incentive to change the status quo. The legalization of marijuana would call into question the very mentality of prohibition, and this is a step that they cannot permit. Accordingly, they have even acted to suppress information that might lead to better marijuana policies. Agencies like the DEA and the National Institute on Drug Abuse claim to be on the front lines of a vital war; they claim to be saving the American way of life itself. On the basis of these claims, they get attention, sympathy, and plenty of money to ruin hundreds of thousands of lives per year.

It’s time we admit that our resources could be far better spent.

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There was once a time when educated people believed that schizophrenia was a moral failing. The very intelligent people of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries believed that those whom we now would call schizophrenic were really witches or possessed by demons. Often, the proper punishment was death. Now we know that these people were mentally ill, and our treatment of the mentally ill has become considerably more humane.

The same was once true of alcoholics. Many very educated people once believed that alcoholism was a moral failing, not a disease. We know better now and recognize that alcohol addiction is a physiological condition combined with a set of behaviors that can indeed be modified. Alcoholism is harmful, but treating it as a crime is more harmful still. Instead, we do all that we can to integrate alcoholics back into society.

Marijuana and other soft drugs are safe enough that their use by responsible adults should not be considered a moral failing at all. Their low potential for addiction or overdose means that they present few medical problems of any definable nature; their use should be a crime only when it endangers others. Using hard drugs is far more dangerous to oneself and others. Accordingly, the use of such highly addictive substances as heroin and cocaine ought to be discouraged in general. Still, the proper response to even the hard drugs should be medical, not criminal.

Lastly, we must consider the dealers. In the war on drugs, dealers are made out to be the ultimate fiends, but in reality they are simply meeting a demand as cheaply as possible, just like any other entrepreneur. My proposal for getting rid of them is simple: Make the hard drugs available to addicts by prescription, cheaply and safely, in the context of a program that would allow them to taper off their use if they so desired. Anyone who wanted to could get help, and at the very least they would be guaranteed a safe, clean, and standard dose every time. Even if the users didn’t want to get help, this new force in the drug market would quickly put most non-licensed dealers out of business. Because addicts are the dealers’ best customers, the result would be a small population of addicts keeping themselves on maintenance doses, while the street-corner dealers disappeared for lack of a market. Their absence would guarantee that there would not be a new generation of addicts to follow.

These policies might not solve the drug problem entirely. Ask yourselves, though: Is what we are doing now really any better?

‘Nuff said.

Hurrah for The Sky Is Falling.

I’m so glad they’re back online!

In the current gay rights debate, the democrats might just have a wedge issue of their own. Amid the furor over gay marriage, the public has lost sight of an earlier question, that of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA). Right now might be a good time to revisit it.

A Bush appointee has recently floated the idea of revoking employment protection for gay and lesbian federal workers, an act that shows more clearly than any just where this administration is heading on the question of gay rights. A county in Tennessee now openly talks about expelling its gay citizens, and no presidential rebuke has been heard. Be sure to check out the incoherent sign one of the anti-gay protesters is holding… That alone makes following the link worthwhile.

Seriously, these are worrying steps, because if Bush wanted to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment and still make it look like a compromise, then he just missed two good chances to pull in the reins. The next obvious step backward, and the one I am dreading, is to begin removing gay employees from “sensitive” government work. It’s all in the name of national security, of course, and we have to be careful in time of war. (The obligatory disclosure: My same-sex spouse is a federal employee in a non-sensitive field. He is completely out at work.)

Now imagine that ENDA started getting lots of attention again. The tables would turn immediately on the religious right. Suddenly, they would be the ones on the defensive. Why are you trying to stop ENDA, we could ask, when polls show that 85% of Americans support it? What’s wrong with fairness, after all? Is there some hidden agenda here that you’re not telling us about? Then they’d have to explain their bigoted views of gay people without recourse to what are currently their nicest-sounding cover stories: the unconventionality of gay marriage and the protection of family and children. As most people see it, these wouldn’t apply to ENDA, and we’d then be treated to what conservatives really think about gays.

Next suppose that ENDA passed the House and Senate. This is pure fantasy, because in an election year ENDA will never pass a republican-dominated congress. If it did, Bush would face a no-win situation. Signing ENDA would erode his support among hard-line conservatives and do nothing to end the open rebellion among gay republicans. Vetoing ENDA would make Bush look even more mean-spirited and uncompassionate than he already does. He could then forget about a large share of the reasonable center come November. Even if ENDA didn’t pass, still the administration would get asked about it, and I’d love to see them try to weasel their way out of that one.

My husband suggests, though, that conservatives would just co-opt the issue, pass ENDA, and make the FMA seem like a nice healthy compromise. Sadly, he may be right, and this might be the reason we haven’t heard much about ENDA lately.

I’ve been meaning to write about terrorism.

No, that’s a lie. I don’t want to write about it at all.

I don’t want to consider its consequences. I don’t want to try and find its root causes in some system of oppression, nor do I want to pin the blame on religion, nor even politics, as tempting as all of these may be.

No, that’s a lie. They aren’t tempting at all.

There was a time when punishment was the only answer to murder, and I’d like to go back to it. There was also a time when passive, nonviolent resistance was the best answer to oppression, and I’d like to go back to that time, too. If the Palestinians wanted their state, for instance, or if the Iraqis wanted the Americans out, they could have it in a year or so if they’d only gather together by the tens of thousands and use the techniques of nonviolent resistance. Lay down in the roads, and do not permit the tanks to pass. Americans and Israelis both are decent folk, and they’re not about to run over women and children.

I suspect the other side knows that nonviolence would work, too: The examples of South Africa, Eastern Europe, and Georgia just a few months ago, are all so recent that no one can plead ignorance on how to overthrow a regime peacefully. But rather than admit that the suicide bombers have died for absolutely nothing, and that nonviolence is the noblest path, it appears that most people in both Iraq and the occupied territories are sitting on their hands. Meanwhile, a tiny minority in each are now covering their nations in shame. Why do the great masses allow it to continue? Am I missing something here?

I’d also like to rescue the concept of martyrdom; it’s had a rough couple of decades. Let’s be perfectly clear: Blowing yourself up in a shopping mall doesn’t make you a martyr. It makes you a monster.

You’re only a martyr if you’re doing nothing in particular, and then someone who hates you comes up and kills you for not renouncing what you believe. Anything less doesn’t count. That’s why martyrs are so precious, so inspiring–and so rare. I can’t even remember the last time we’ve had a genuine martyr. Can you?

Lastly, martyrs may be grand, but the thirst for martyrdom is still idiotic. Shouldn’t you want to live for your beliefs rather than die for them? And if death is all that your beliefs demand, then it’s time to reconsider your beliefs.

Like I said, this is not a post on terrorism.

I’m working at home today instead of at school, waiting for a fragile delivery of live plants from California. My usual routine is to take my laptop, minus the WiFi card, and work at the JHU library without the distractions of blogging. I have many virtues, but discipline is not one of them. I have to cleverly force myself to work if I am going to work at all.

But today, I’m doing stupid stuff like searching for heroin on E-bay. Really, I’m just looking to find this gilded-age advertisement. I think it would look great next to the medicine cabinet.

If you think an ad for heroin is stupid, check out HR 3920, which would effectively declare Congress the highest court in the land. (Thanks to Dave Jansing for the link.) Read the text of the bill; it manages the elegant rhetorical trick of being both short and ridiculous.

HR 3920 proposes that congress may give itself the power to overrule the courts with a supermajority vote, precisely as it now overrules presidential vetoes. And yet shouldn’t it require a constitutional amendment to enact a power just as broad as overriding a veto? HR 3920 gives as its justification Article III section 2 of the Constitution, which reads as follows:

In all Cases affecting Ambassadors, other public Ministers and Consuls, and those in which a State shall be Party, the supreme Court shall have original Jurisdiction. In all the other Cases before mentioned, the supreme Court shall have appellate Jurisdiction, both as to Law and Fact, with such Exceptions, and under such Regulations as the Congress shall make.

Congress thus has the power to make “regulations” for the courts, true. And yet there are clear limits to the scope of these regulations. Article III section 1 reads as follows:

The judicial Power of the United States, shall be vested in one supreme Court, and in such inferior Courts as the Congress may from time to time ordain and establish. The Judges, both of the supreme and inferior Courts, shall hold their Offices during good Behaviour, and shall, at stated Times, receive for their Services, a Compensation, which shall not be diminished during their Continuance in Office.

As I understand it, HR3920 would declare that the Congress was a Super-Supreme Court, making the current Supreme Court no longer “the” judicial power of the united states. This is in clear violation of Article III section 1. Further, this section’s explicit statement that congress cannot diminish the pay of the justices very strongly implies that other forms of congressional chastisement are equally illegitimate. The first time Congress tried to use its new power of review, the courts would cite Article III section 1 to overrule it. Our entire constitutional system would fall apart, and all that would remain would be a playground argument:

“I’m the highest court in the land!”

“No, I’m the highest court in the land!

“Are not.”

“Are too.”

There is a reason for separation of powers, and you’re looking right at it. For almost all of our history, judicial review has been the foundation of our legal practice. Part of the system of judicial review is that the Supreme Court is the final arbiter of what the Constitution means. It isn’t democratic. It isn’t accountable to the people, and it’s not supposed to be.

The democratic urge is one element of good governance, but only one. Another important element is the consistent rule of law, and democracy cannot always guarantee such consistency. Nor is democracy the best guarantee of justice, for in a completely pure democracy, the majority quite obviously has the right to oppress the minority. The rule of law and the regime of individual rights we have established in the United States serves as a check on the abuses of democracy, and the courts are the guardians of this system.

The founders created the court system with very little accountability to the people for exactly this reason. The courts’ chief accountability ought to be to the internal logic of the laws themselves, and particularly to that of the Constitution. Justices who have studied the law all their lives, who serve for life, and who are neither rewarded nor penalized for their decisions, are the most likely people to understand how to apply the Constitution. To study the law is to live in the history of the republic, not in its present. To make a ruling is to take the longest possible view of the issues at stake, considering not merely the will of the people, but above all the eternal principles of justice and individual rights. The people are not always loyal to those principles, and to be frank, neither are the courts. These last, though, have by their very institutional makeup a better chance of getting things right in the long term.

Congress, by contrast, is usually looking no farther ahead than the next election cycle. The system of electing representatives every two years is very good for making laws, but lousy for sorting them out over the long term and weighing them against one another. Our system of government is based on these two powers really and truly being incompatible with one another, and they need to stay that way for it to work.

Say, this doesn’t have anything to do with gay marriage, does it?

I was in Paris when the United States went to war. At the time I believed very strongly that it was a bad decision. Some friends invited me to the massive antiwar demonstrations taking place across the city, but I refused. I feared–and was right to fear–that they would be more anti-American than anti-war. I wanted very much to be at home so I could protest the war in a setting that wouldn’t compromise my patriotism. Standing next to Palestinians chanting “Death to America” has never been my scene.

One year later, I would like to take the opportunity to consider some of the causes and consequences of the war. As usually happens in an election year, both sides are angling for an advantage. Curiously, I find that they’re often doing it with a lot of soon-to-expire ideas. They’re also missing what seems to me the biggest idea of all.

First, to the liberals: It is absurd to claim that Bush went to war solely to enrich himself and his friends in the oil industry. It is similarly absurd to think that the United States went to war solely to flex its imperial muscle. If all Bush had wanted was to make money for Halliburton, he could easily have done it by openly and peacefully trading with Saddam Hussein, exactly as Halliburton attempted to do in secret even while the sanctions still stood.

Likewise, if all the administration wanted was to put an unruly state back in its place, then the first step would have been to flood its markets with American products and culture. Dirt-poor Iraq, sitting atop its enormous petroleum resources, would have eaten up a deal this sweet. It’s the only empire-building we’ve ever been good at. We now know that many European countries were actively trading with the Baathist regime until just before it fell, and if the USA had flouted the UN sanctions, neither Europe nor the U.N. could have stopped us. Oil companies in the United States would have made the most money with the least amount of risk if we had simply declared that Hussein’s secular, nationalist regime was necessary to stabilize a region threatened by religious militancy.

It would hardly have been the first time that we’ve brushed aside human rights violations in the name of the almighty petrodollar; just look at how we’ve treated Nigeria, Saudi Arabia, and several of the former Soviet republics. We make much the same case with the autocratic regime we now support in Pakistan, holding that the enemy of my enemy must surely be my friend. I don’t care for that argument at all, but we definitely continue to make it.

By caricaturing the conservative position, by saying that all justifications for war are mere covers for a power grab, liberals have tried to make every supporter of the war look like a dupe. The going liberal argument has a certain short-term appeal, but they’ve got to stop making it eventually. There were, after all, some plausible reasons to go to war, not the least of which was to get rid of a totalitarian thug and create a functioning democracy in the Middle East. It’s a huge risk we’ve taken, and perhaps there is room to criticize the taking of that risk, but the entire enterprise can’t be brushed aside so easily as liberals would like to think. The longer we stay in Iraq, the more inconsistent the liberal position will grow. As we invest more time, more money, and more lives, it will become increasingly clear that we weren’t just pursuing economic hegemony by other means.

Now to the conservatives: You’ve placed the liberals in a very nasty trap indeed, and it’s high time that you stopped. If, on the one hand, liberals say that they’re ambivalent about the war, then you will impugn their patriotism and even accuse them of treason. If, on the other hand, liberals say they’re glad the bloody tyrant is finally gone, then you will call them spineless.

By caricaturing the liberal position, conservatives have created a catch-22 that has impoverished political discourse all around. The going conservative argument has a certain short-term appeal, but they’ve also got to stop making it eventually. Criticism of the war or of how it has been conducted does not mean that liberals loved Saddam Hussein. Conversely, if liberals are glad that he is gone, it does not mean that they forfeit all right to criticize the other facets of the war. The reasons for legitimate criticism of the occupation are building up, and brushing them aside with veiled charges of treason will get harder and harder as time goes on. The longer we stay in Iraq, the more inconsistent the conservative position will grow, because mistakes are still being made, because some of the criticism is absolutely valid, and because ultimately a democracy needs more than one perspective on foreign policy.

So where do I stand on the war? The historian in me says that it’s too early to tell. Give me another 200 years and I’ll call you back. The blogger in me wants to give an opinion right away, and for the sake of form I’m going to let him try.

First, I wish I’d blogged the war. You’d have seen an interesting sight back then, an opponent of the war who thought we’d win an easy victory. Unlike many of the doves, I wasn’t frightened by Saddam Hussein. Very few nations can put up a decent fight against the United States, and we already had the proof that Iraq wasn’t one of them.

On the contrary, I opposed the war precisely because I thought Iraq posed very little danger at all. I believed that North Korea and al Qaeda were both more serious problems, and that it was a particularly grave mistake to divide our resources in the struggle against the terrorists who had attacked us. One year ago, I opposed the war because I believed that Saddam Hussein was a washed-up has-been of a dictator. Examining the remnants of his regime has only validated my assessment.

I also opposed attacking Iraq because I did not believe in the doctrine of preemptive war. I did not support it then, and I do not support it now. One victory is not enough to purify an unjust doctrine; even ten thousand victories wouldn’t do it. If we woke up tomorrow and found that Iraq had become as peaceful as Switzerland, still I would challenge the doctrine of preemptive war as stated by the administration.

There is nothing–absolutely nothing–that makes a war of unprovoked aggression valid. Nor have we ever made war with totalitarian thugs simply because they were totalitarian thugs–The standard has always been much higher than that, and I just didn’t see it in Iraq. Until we are directly attacked, or until we have clear, compelling evidence of a specific, imminent threat, then there is no justification for war. Feeling threatened simply isn’t enough.

I supported attacking Afghanistan because that action was emphatically not a preemptive war. A group with close ties to Afghanistan’s Taliban government directly attacked the United States on several occasions. When we called on the Taliban to bring al Qaeda to justice, they scoffed. We then acted on one of the cornerstone principles of international relations: States must maintain an absolute monopoly on international violence. If the Taliban wanted to have it both ways–proclaiming itself a state, and yet taking no steps toward ending arbitrary international violence–then the only course of action was to obliterate their regime. We did, and it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving enemy.

By contrast, the doctrine of preemptive war is a betrayal of our ideals. It effectively says that the state’s monopoly on violence can be used for whatever purpose the state finds expedient. Fighting a war because we find another country suspect is suddenly legitimate, where previously it has not been, and mere suspicion is a terribly supple standard of evidence. What will we do when our enemies attack us preemptively, claiming that we posed a threat to them? By our own doctrines, they would be fighting a just war. Everyone–absolutely everyone–who has ever fired the first shot in a war has done so on the doctrine of preemption; no one ever starts a war with an open declaration of savagery. It’s always preemption, even when it’s a shoddy cover for the very worst of causes. To endorse preemption means that there is nothing special about the United States going to war; it means that our own justifications are just like those of every other nation that ever initiated a war.

I do not mean to suggest, as some on the left have done, some easy moral equivalence between the Bush administration and Saddam Hussein’s regime. There was and is no such equivalence. The very idea of preemptive war, though, is so slippery that it has made such equivalences thinkable for many people more ignorant than you or I. For that, it should be forever banished from our foreign policy. It is an embarrassment to our nation and to our allies around the world.

A state’s monopoly on international violence should have only one legitimate use, and that is the minimizing of international violence. It makes no moral sense starting a real war to keep another country from starting a hypothetical war. Did we fight a small war then to prevent a bigger one later? Perhaps, but we are never going to know for sure, no matter how much we strut about our victory now. And strutting is the last thing we ought to be doing at the moment.

Like it or not, Iraq is our problem now and will probably remain that way for some time to come. Three things about Iraq are now beyond dispute: First, Iraq has not become the boundless disaster that many liberals predicted. Second, Iraq at least in the near term is certainly better off without Saddam Hussein. Third, it’s clear that things over there could be much better than they are now. The only responsible plan now is to create a stable, peaceful, democratic government in Iraq before we leave. Anything less would do both Iraq and the United States a disservice for decades to come.

Only rebuilding Iraq will show al Qaeda that the United States is not to be frightened into submission. Rather than declaring victory–or defeat–we have no choice but to stay the course we have started. America should be building cultural and economic ties with Iraq as fast as we can, much as we did with Western Europe following World War II. The Iraqis have high expectations for what the United States can accomplish–Some would say ridiculously high. Perhaps they are, but given enough time, we might just be able to live up to them anyway, provided that we encourage the kind of cultural exchange we have always been good at.

Cultural exchange? Yes, absolutely. It has to go both ways if we’re going to do it properly. We should trade with them not only for oil, but also the products of Iraqi agriculture, industry, arts, and popular culture. We did no less for Germany and Japan following the Second World War, and this broad-based arrangement meant that the former Axis powers emerged with healthy, well-rounded economies. These economies became the foundations of two very successful democracies, and we should do likewise with Iraq. Most emphatically, we do not need Iraq to become another Saudi Arabian oil plantation. Extraction economies like these do not produce democracies or freedom.

In short, we need to finish what we have started in Iraq, on all levels, even while we abandon forever the unsound justifications that brought us there in the first place. We took an unprincipled stand, and we may yet get away with it, but doing it once ought to be more than enough.

On Saturdays I like to get someone else to write Positive Liberty for me. It’s so much easier that way.

Then I go back to bed and cuddle until a decadent 8 AM.

Traditional values are disappearing. Everyone says it. Conservatives lament the fact while liberals look forward to a new world with newer, better values. I’m here to tell you that they’re both wrong.

As an experiment, I recently substituted Christian radio for my usual NPR. I went into the experiment with high hopes of finding the essential difference between liberals and conservatives, using the controlled medium of radio to figure out how we differ not just on religious or political issues, but on our everyday approaches to community, family, money, health, and well-being. Could conservative Christians teach liberals a lot about how to live, even apart from their specific creed? From their talk, we should expect nothing less than a profoundly better way of life, and I took them up on the challenge.

Obviously, the first thing to be found on Christian radio is Christian music. I have to admit that my tastes and those of Christian musicians are almost mutually exclusive. I love house, techno, psychedelic pop and progressive rock. I’m not really an expert on Christian music, but I don’t know of any Christian musicians in those genres. I persisted in the experiment anyway. I wasn’t looking for the music; what I wanted was the community.

After Christian music, the second thing to be found is of course Christian talk. To be sure, Christian radio says a lot of things that make my blood boil. I’ve noted some of them here before. Christian radio programs revile gay families. They condemn the sins of religious tolerance, secularism, pluralism, and humanism. They encourage sectarianism. They demonize Islam. They promote creationism. They condemn women’s rights.

They confuse their Latin root words and are grossly ignorant of the Bible. Just this morning, Focus on the Family’s “Doctor” James Dobson claimed on 95.1 WRBS that the word “confidence” derived from the words “con” and “fide” meaning “with God.” He also claimed that for the last 5,000 years, marriage has existed only between one man and one woman. Apparently he forgot all about Solomon’s 700 wives and 300 concubines. For the heirs to the Judeo-Christian tradition, the religious right can be a paltry lot indeed.

You don’t need my blog to know that, though. You can just read the Bible, read the Constitution, and then turn on the radio. Again, I wasn’t looking for the music; what I wanted was the community. I wanted to see the traditional community that I presumed to be lacking among my liberal friends.

What I found, though, was that after you strip away the ideologies from both liberals and conservatives, if you strip away the things that I find narrow and bigoted–and strip away the things that they find humanist, tolerationist, and pluralist–then all you will find is one thing between the both of us. That thing is the same from liberal to conservative, and it is called humanity. People are still people, wherever you go.

We’re all trying, and I dare to think that we’re all trying honestly. Below the ideological surface we all have the same worries, the same inner struggles, and the same quiet little victories. We worry about our kids. We worry about our communities. We worry about our money. We hope for the future, all of us. No one–not even the ignorant Dr. Dobson–is honestly out to destroy America, no matter how much either side may say so.

Liberal and conservative radio belie their own exclusionist rhetoric, because ultimately they still have so much in common with one another. Christian radio has segments on managing your money, on health, on child care, and on communicating with your spouse. NPR and even Pacifica are much same. We’re all trying to get by in the world; we all wonder what the future might hold, and we all ask ourselves how we’re going to look back on our lives when we come to the very end. Liberals come together, too, and try in our equally feeble, equally human ways to solve the big questions of life.

Christians would no doubt stop me at this point and argue that their faith indeed makes them different. Faith is a fundamental difference, not one to be dismissed lightly. We have been saved from our sins, they might say, and God directs all of our actions. The moral authority of a believer is inherently superior.

To which I might reply: Oh, really? Solomon thought that God was directing all of his actions too, but then his 700 wives and 300 concubines immediately led him astray. In no time at all he was bowing down before idols. It sounds flip, but honestly it isn’t. Like Solomon, the religious right might have all the wisdom in the world, but if it lacks humility it’s still going to fail. The great test for religious conservatives in today’s America is not to remake everyone else in their own image, for this is impossible. Even by their own theology, nearly everyone is going to hell no matter what. The real great test is for them to live in peace with the rest of us sinners.

So of course there are religious differences. There are political differences, too, but even together, these shouldn’t be enough to overwhelm our common bonds. Perhaps the only thing that permanently divides us is that I don’t pretend the answers are simple. They aren’t. The answers are excruciatingly hard at times, and I may well be wrong in everything that I believe. Because I know that I might be wrong, I absolutely refuse to force my way of life on anyone else.

Oh the joy and comfort of saying that we are right, and that everyone else is wrong! It’s clear, it’s tough, and it’s simple. But I’m willing to drop that mask and admit that we’re not so different after all. I’m willing to admit that we’re all a part of this one big messy American community, and that we are all trying, really and honestly, to make it better, each in our varied ways. I’m willing to say that religious conservatives are trying one way of life, and that they have the right to do it–if and only if I get the same right. Oh yeah, and my husband, too.

Can we make a deal?

To sweeten the pot, I submit that we, as a nation, are absolutely not in a state of moral crisis. I invite religious conservatives to share this view; I suspect it brings even greater joys and comforts than does the grim determination that everyone else in America is evil. The Stars and Stripes is the messiest flag in the world, and for good reason: It represents our irrepressible diversity. Aesthetically, it’s big, busy and disconcerting, yet somehow it coheres. In short, it’s a lot like us. We may be threatened by hostile outsiders, but from within, we’re still strong. Our traditional values like family, community, good stewardship, and compassion, all turn out to be thriving, provided you know where to look for them. They’re on the right, on the left, and everywhere else, too. No one has forsaken them, no one has a monopoly on them, and no one practices them perfectly.

My husband and I care for our neighborhood. We keep the yard neat. We pick up trash in the street and return stray kittens to their owners. We–gasp–have taken care of the neighbors’ kid sometimes. We manage our money carefully, because our parents are getting old and may well need help soon. We vote and pay taxes and read all different kinds of news to make sure we’re getting the full story. We read everything from the New York Times to the National Review to the blogs I proudly feature on my sidebar. We talk with people who have different opinions from our own. We respect and even cherish the religious faiths of others. We hope desperately that America will prevail in the war on terrorism, because America is the best hope we’ve ever had. I suspect all of you feel the same way.

So I repeat: Can we make a deal? Can we make a society that’s big enough for all of us to go our separate ways, but united enough to stand up for that very same freedom? Come to think of it, freedom is a traditional American value, too. Can we still make it work?

Tough question? This one shouldn’t be.

Everyone agrees that the trouble began with the League of Decent Humanoids.

Years ago, the elves lived mostly in seclusion. They raised their children in forest clearings and only dealt with the humans in the kingdom of X. when absolutely necessary. Such interactions were rare, as the elves’ chief cultural outlets were falconry, flower-arranging, and poetry written in semaphore. Needless to say, humans are not noted for their talents in any of these. Most humans knew little about the elves; what knowledge they did have consisted only of fables. Elves, they whispered darkly, sometimes steal human children. They gather in the forests at night, the darkness mercifully hiding them, and there they do unspeakable things.

Not everyone shared these prejudices. Some non-elves had actually lived in the self-same forest clearings or had at least been near them long enough to know the elves’ true natures. Based on their shared interests, a number of herbalists, huntsmen, and even linguists from the Gnomerican University thoroughly enjoyed the company of the elves. They proclaimed their hosts to be kind, decent folk. Now mind you, human herbalists who spent too much time with the elves occasionally became the target of a rude flower-based nickname here and there. For the most part, though, the choice was simple: If you were going to be a flower-arranger, then you’d better study with the elves, like it or not.

A few years ago, a number of elves had an idea. Living in the kingdom of X., they clearly faced uncertain prospects. Wouldn’t it be easier, they asked, if we created some permanent symbol to indicate those humanoids of all races who are kind to elves? Then everyone who actually was kind to elves could get one of these symbols, wear it proudly, and the elves would know they’d found a friend. Not only elves, but humans, gnomes, and even the dwarves could purchase these icons if they were so inclined.

The plan took shape. The leaders drew up a symbol from ancient elvish mythology. Displaying it meant that the wearer was a member of the League of Decent Humanoids, committed to ending the persecution of the elves. Besides, they asked, how could you go wrong wearing that snazzy forest-green logo? “We are standing up for decency,” the League’s members said to one another. “In this enlightened age, you can’t be against decency anymore.”

The symbols spread far and wide across the kingdom of X. “We’ll stop this persecution,” said the leaders of the League. “Visibility is the key.” Herbalists put the sign in their shop windows, and gnomish academics wrote thoughtful books about the history of anti-elf persecution.

It was perfectly true, of course, that elves were persecuted. Some elves were beaten up for their pointy ears, while all of them faced discrimination in housing and employment. The king’s bureaucrats treated the elves and their families differently, making them go through complicated steps even to be partly recognized as a family. “Families are a human institution,” they said. “It wouldn’t do to have elves forming families.” An ancient human scripture-book even said that “thou shalt not suffer an elf to live.”

Usually the humans ignored that advice, but sometimes they didn’t.

Prior to the League of Decent Humanoids, the humans had never really thought much about the elves. Isolation had helped the humans to ignore their elven neighbors; in return, the elves got some measure of peace simply by avoiding the humans. Sadly, the isolation also meant that elves often had to disguise who they were. Some of them took to covering their pointy ears and wearing false beards while traveling in the human areas of X. Owing to the beards, many a human never suspected the presence of an elf, even in his very own neighborhood. As the elves learned more self-respect–in part from the League of Decent Humanoids–they became angrier at the humans’ oppression. They stopped hiding who they were. They sported not just pointy ears but pointy shoes, too, sometimes even in public.

“Can’t these elves just go somewhere else?” asked the humans. “I’ve got no problem with elves, but really, do they have to flaunt it?”

Those humans who lived near the elves now had no choice but to declare where they stood; the League of Decent Humanoids had forced their hands. Would they join the League and admit that the elves were just as human as the humans? Surely this was nonsense, right on the face of it. Only the humans were humans. By definition, the elves were not. Some few magicians claimed that they could change an elf into a human, but the research gnomes at Gnomerican University demonstrated that these magicians were dangerous frauds.

Now the one thing humans are racially incapable of doing is admitting that they are wrong, so it seemed to many that the only other option was to form some kind of coherent anti-elf policy, all while not seeming to be too hateful. In the Kingdom of X, hatred is much like masturbation; it is a pleasure that all enjoy in secret but few can practice openly for very long.

In their franker moments, the humans conceded that trying to eliminate the elves wouldn’t go over too well. Even the very religious sometimes got squeamish talking about certain passages of that ancient scripture-book. “Could someone please stand up against this new elven assertiveness,” they asked, “yet still be… well… humane?”

There were plenty who attempted such a course, and from their ranks came the Association of Moral Justice. Drawing on human mythology, they chose another symbol that showed the fine human commitment to the principles of morality and justice. “We’re not anti-elf,” they insisted. “We’re just pro-human. Humans are great; we deserve to be celebrated.” They held loud meetings and decorated themselves with their very own ancient icon, this one trimmed neatly in a rich lavender hue.

Elven wizards began to wind their magical staves with forest-green ribbon, in support of the League of Decent Humanoids. Human wizards carried their powers in cauldrons; they took to glazing these magical vessels with a deep lavender enamel.

Human falconers, such as there were, began to paint their birds’ feathers lavender as well, so that for miles around one could see how much pride their owners had in being human. Human falconers were a minority too, and they needed to stand up for themselves; hate had nothing to do with it. Yet all of falconry now fell into two mutually suspicious camps, one “pro-elf,” and the other “pro-human.” Falconers in each camp insisted that those of the other were somehow less worthy, and that “true” falconry could only be found with them. A smattering of humans and elves each ended up on the “wrong” sides of this dispute, and these unfortunates heard no end of criticism from everyone.

One morning the kingdom of X awakened to find that the elven semaphore towers atop the high places of the kingdom had all been draped in forest-green canvas. Atop 50-foot platforms the ancient elven symbol now glared down upon them. Besides the traditional poetry, the semaphorists sent new verses. Frankly, not all of them were very nice. The Association of Moral Justice set up rival towers and learned the art of semaphore signaling that the humans had long neglected. The Association’s towers sent out rival messages, and sometimes these too were not very nice. Rather than relaying the messages of all other towers as custom demanded, the new human towers garbled the elves’ messages, mocking even their finer poetry and exposing its “hidden agendas.”

Each side talked more and more, yet little by little, the elves and the humans entirely stopped talking to one other. Great bonfires lit up the semaphore towers by night; the flags snapped and flashed in the air, always moving, stabbing, accusing. The days grew long and short again; the elves forgot the songs of old. The humans blamed the elves for stirring up so much trouble; the elves blamed the humans for not giving up their ancient prejudices. All the while, elven families were still looked down upon, and humans hid their children lest any elves steal them away. It really was all about the children, the humans insisted. “We’re not bigots,” said the Association of Moral Justice. “We just care about our community. What are you going to do, call us bigots for protecting our children? Will you call us bigots because we are Moral and Just?”

Now in their secret hearts, the elves believed no such thing. The elves liked morality and justice every bit as much as the next humanoid. They cared about human communities just like their own. Hadn’t they done an awful lot of flower-arranging for those celebrations back in the good old days? Even more importantly, after a certain amount of cohabitation with the humans, weren’t there at least a few human relations in every elven family tree?

Still, the elves came to resent the idea that only humans could ever be Moral or Just. They wanted to argue that elves could be equally moral and just, but the point was too subtle to argue. Regrettably the words “morality” and “justice” disappeared from elven poetry, resented now as coded language for elven self-hatred. In like fashion, the word “decency” disappeared from the language of humans, who now found it a code word for the decay of traditional human values. And so it came to pass that one half the kingdom used one half the language to talk to its own half alone, while the other half of the kingdom used the other half of the language to talk to those who never listened to the first half.

So long as the one did not let up, the other took it as a proof most positive: Our side is the only one that cares about Justice. Our side is the only one that cares about Decency. Very little of this talk did anything to help the lot of the elves; still they were mocked, perhaps more than ever, and still the bureaucrats looked askance at them when their families showed up at the royal palace in need of help. More and more humans started quoting the ancient scripture-book at the elves, and they did not always quote the part about being nice to strangers. The dwarves retreated to their caves. The research gnomes went back to Gnomerican University and explained the entire situation away with incomprehensible theories. They professed to be tremendously satisfied with themselves, as did everyone else. Yet no one at all was really happy.

And so the situation stands to the present day. The elves and their friends feel sure that things have changed forever, and that they will never go back to the years of hidden shame. The League of Decent Humanoids is grimly determined to fight no matter what it takes, and it seems to have the resources to do it. The Association of Moral Justice can scarcely say in public what it would really like to do, but in the end it will probably pass a large number of laws against the elves.

The elves, though, live forever, and they are cursed with very long memories. Even now they are vowing to tell the stories of the present day to their great-grandchildren, who may well dust off the law books, find not a few antiquated provisions, and quietly delete them.

I know, I know. Yoga is an icon for the old-time New-Agers who don’t seem to notice that the information revolution has both come and gone already. You’re probably thinking that I play “Kumbayah” on my acoustic guitar, too, whenever the mood strikes me. But I’m not growing a ponytail and I don’t even own anything that’s tie-dyed. So get with the times, you say. Get your ass in front of that computer, darling, and hunch your back a little bit more. Good posture is so 1970s.

I still do yoga.

Maybe yoga only got so far the United States because it came from a polytheistic religion. Most people in the United States are content with one God, thank you very much. One God in three persons is as complicated as we get, and when our Guys get anatomical, it’s purely human. They’ve only got one head, and it’s not an elephant head. They have two arms, two legs, and no additional appendages. Come to think of it, we’re still debating about the physical form of the Holy Ghost, but one thing’s for sure: Yoga is all about those multi-headed multi-legged elephant-face gods from somewhere-over-there. It’s not for us.

I still do yoga.

Some days it hurts like hell. I get up into a shoulder stand and my neck is in pain from doing something I shouldn’t have been doing the afternoon before. I twist, and the muscles along one side of my chest feel like they’re separating in a way not good to behold, a feeling that no one who hasn’t done yoga is likely to feel. Slowly, slowly, slowly; the way of grace is to push as slowly as possible. My foot cramps, and I go from the pose of Shiva the Dancer to the pose of God-Fucking-Dammit-I’m-Hopping-On-One-Foot-Like-A-Fool.

I still do yoga…. I just do it gentler some days than others.

I’m an atheist for crying out loud. I don’t believe in anything at all unless I can see, touch, taste, smell, or feel it. I don’t believe in auras or chakras or the cosmic bank account of my karma. Crystals are a neat little trick of chemistry. I don’t believe in reincarnation and I sure as hell don’t believe in castes. I burn incense, but only because it smells nice. Religion is at least 90% bunk, and that’s when I’m feeling charitable.

I still do yoga.

I do it because of the way it makes me feel. It’s like I’ve never felt anything so real before. If you think that sex puts you in touch with your body, then you’re fooling yourself even worse than you can imagine. Want to be in touch with your body? Then strip down to nothing but your shorts, get on the mat, and start laying out the poses. Breathe deep, feel the pain and the rush and the stretch, feel the entire being of your body. Do something really hard with this piece of flesh for once–Lord knows most of us never do that in our automated, pre-packaged, convenience-food culture. Feel your feet and hands bury into the floor and your chest rise surreally toward the ceiling as you go into the full wheel pose. Your head arches back, between the hands, and all that you know is your body, your material-self, your own fleshy reality behind all the crap that you’ve come up with to hide it. I still remember the first time I managed the incredibly precarious full-wheel pose. I also remember the ugly moment when I realized that I hadn’t the faintest idea how to get down from it.

I got down, and I still do yoga.

I got down from that first full-wheel pose all right. I got down, and back up again, and down-and-up yet again. I’ve got a routine now, with warm-ups, sun salutations, balance poses, strength poses, flexibility poses. I don’t believe in the spirit, just the body, and that’s the way that religion’s finally gotten to me in the end. It hasn’t come through the spirit but through the body, and boy-oh-boy has it ever got me. Sometimes I think I’m fooling myself, and that yoga is just one big trick that my body has learned to play on my mind. After all, I’m looking to fill that God-shaped hole that even the atheist supposedly still has. I ought to be more sophisticated than that. I’m a rationalist and a skeptic, and I’m damn proud of it. Remember the benefits of being an infidel? I get to scoff at religion itself, because these days religion is just a bunch of people killing each other over whose imaginary friend is better. Then I catch myself slouching again. I get out my mat, I start doing the poses, and I believe.

I still do yoga.

I remember the first time I did the inclined plane pose, too. Picture facing the ceiling. Your heels and the palms of your hands are both on the ground, but nothing else is. Your arms are straight, holding you up in a triangle. Imagine your spine straight, your neck arched gracefully back, your toes pointed to extend every last fiber of your body.

Now imagine painfully twisting and straining your back. That was me the first time I tried the inclined plane. I got over it in a couple of days, thanks to some advil and a few good backrubs. I learned a lot in the first few months, things about my body, my mind, my habits of discipline. The inclined plane is a piece of cake now.

Some things, though, I’m probably never going to master. I’ve tried and tried, and even now I can’t get into the lotus position. A lot of people have asked me about it, and it’s getting embarrassing. After six months I’m not a single inch closer than when I started. I know beyond the slightest breath of a doubt that I will never be a yoga master. I’m always going to be mediocre at it, just like with most things. The eternal doesn’t care, and neither do I.

I still do yoga.