Positive Liberty

True confession: I’m coming to realize that I find the taste of saffron perfectly insipid.

I say “coming to realize,” because, like you, I valorized the stuff for years. But look — it’s almost flavorless, people. What are you going on and on about?

What little flavor I can detect reminds me of metal, or maybe burned plastic. I’ve cooked with it to the point where I can detect the flavor in the finished food, but I’ve always regretted it: a bitter, neon-orange waste of good basmati. Saffron is a color in search of a flavor. That’s why this paean to saffron from Elatia Harris makes no sense at all to me:

[W]hat if you don’t like it? . . . It may just be that your palate is extremely sensitive to anything that tastes at all bitter. If you don’t like arugala, artichokes, pomegranates, tamarind, wild asparagus, green tea, tobiko, rosewater, cilantro, Seville oranges, dark chocolate or fresh chilis, then the odds are very great you will not like saffron and should not put yourself out to try it, even though saffron tastes like none of those things, exactly.

But I like arugula, artichokes, pomegranates, wild asparagus, green tea, tobiko, rosewater, cilantro, Seville oranges, dark chocolate, and fresh chilis. I can taste them. Saffron? It’s wasted on me.

And it’s an expensive waste too. There’s just no way on earth that I’m going to buy saffron at the going rates. (Last price check at the local grocery? Well north of $300/oz. It’s not quite as pricey as cocaine, but it sure is getting there. Harris claims to be able to order it for $72.95/oz, but even then… even then!)

Hypotheses:

1. Peer pressure. Call it the emperor’s new condiment.
2. Saffron is a status symbol, a way of signaling not just wealth but culinary sophistication. This combines well with the first hypothesis, actually.
3. Attributing a strong flavor to a strongly colored item. (But turmeric colors in just about the same way. What gives?)
4. I have a rare genetic disorder that makes me incapable of appreciating something extraordinary.

Most folks understand that homosexually oriented people are more likely to be depressed at some point in their lives. Different sides in the culture war interpret the phenomenon differently (obviously). Gays and their allies say it’s because of societal mistreatment. The religious right and their anti-gay allies try to blame gays themselves, citing social science that shows the same higher rates of depression in modern gay friendly Scandinavian countries, places that longer than most have had gay friendly cultural environments. Hence chosen homosexual practices must cause the psychological trauma, not hostile antigay environments.

Mistreatment is relevant to “sexual orientation as a legitimate civil rights category.” Such is a traditional criteria for enhanced “civil rights” protection; we protect things like race, gender, religion, ethnic origin, etc. in large part because of a history of mistreating these various social groups. No one doubts why “race” should have such protection. But there is controversy regarding “sexual orientation.” And social conservatives often play “race” against “sexual orientation,” trying to rile up blacks to indignation about gays having the “gall” to make civil rights arguments.

While I caution the pro-gay side against trying to make too close an analogy to race, I also remind folks that we do not live in a world where race is the only recognized “civil rights” category. If it were, then perhaps gays would have no business trying to make civil rights arguments. Rather we live in a world where it’s race, gender, ethnic origin, religion, age, disability and many other categories that receive “civil rights” protection.

Yes, gays, like every other social group, haven’t suffered slavery or Jim Crow as blacks have. But, that doesn’t mean gays haven’t suffered. In one of my most widely read posts I noted:

Homosexuals historically have been subject to sodomy laws which led to imprisonment or worse, being banned from government jobs, institutionalization with a whole slew of sadistic treatments like electroshock therapy, reputation ruining, all which have led to at worst suicides like that of World War II hero Alan Turing. In short, if mistreatment is a criterion for being a civil rights victim, homosexuals easily pass that test.

I write all this as a preface to what I see as a profound example of what’s probably a typical example of human suffering related to homosexuality. It comes from an unlikely source. Ryan T. Anderson of First Things writes about a friend struggling with his homosexual orientation, yet at the same time who wants to remain “chaste,” true to the Roman Catholic Church’s teachings, perhaps one day live a normal functional heterosexual life. Anderson writes this with the opposite worldview that I argue for here and tries to score the opposite “political points” that I would. I want to ignore all that and instead focus on the human suffering, the real psychological trauma about which his friend testifies:

He came out to me in an email. I’ve known him for years, long enough that I can’t remember when we first met….Over the past three years, “Chris” (let’s call him) has experienced a pronounced attraction to other males-for one old friend from high school in particular….

Chris’ situation is sad, but it seems to be moving somewhere. He told me how he had cried daily for the first two years of his same-sex attractions, knowing that he was becoming someone he didn’t want to be.

Mind you, this isn’t, from the information we’ve received a person who has chosen to act on his homosexual orientation (also keep in mind that both Anderson and his friend are relatively young, in their early 20s). But someone who is merely struggling with an unchosen sexual orientation. Indeed, someone who is attempting to “do the right thing” according to his own religiously conservative conscience:

A crush, maybe, or an infatuation. Whatever it was, he knew it wasn’t healthy. And though he had never acted on the attraction, he explained, it led to fantasies and lusts he didn’t want. So he made a resolution never to embrace them as essential to his identity or accept them as permanent or untreatable-a resolution he has kept practically alone, without the support of community, family, or friends. Over the course of many phone calls and emails, he shared with me his reflections on what he thought had created his problem of same-sex attractions.

I don’t want to politicize this moving article too much. I just want readers to appreciate the following facts: 1) This is someone who presumably never chose to do what religious conservatives consider “immoral,” that is engage in homosexual behavior (indeed, he appears to be one such conservative); but also 2) someone whose suffering over his blameless, unchosen sexual orientation led him to CRY daily for over two years.

I think we all know what it’s like to be sad; but crying daily for two years…just stop and reflect on that. That illustrates the psychological trauma from which homosexually oriented people suffer simply because of their blameless, unchosen orientation.

Hopefully this sheds light on why younger homosexually oriented folks more likely attempt suicide. And also consider the many who may take their lives without revealing why they suffer. Indeed Anderson notes

[o]ther than his confessor and therapist, I’m the only person who knows. His parents would be devastated-his mother wondering whether she had caused it, his father fearing he had failed his son. His roommates and friends wouldn’t know how to take it.

How many young people actually do take their lives because of their unwanted, unchosen, sexual orientation? We may never know.

However we properly resolve this divisive culture war issue, just stop and realize that many people really do suffer profoundly for their unchosen, blameless sexual orientation.

After my last post on Peter Marshall, coauthor of “The Light and the Glory,” John Fea informs me of his article on the 30th anniversary of the book. Check it out. It’s a great article and offers a cautionary note to Christians historians. Here is a taste:

For example, Marshall and Manuel interpret the fog that rose in the East River on the morning of August 30, 1776, as God’s direct intervention to aid George Washington’s midnight retreat from the British assault on the Continental Army’s position on Brooklyn Heights. They describe the fog’s rising as “the most amazing episode of divine intervention in the Revolutionary War.” They believe this because Washington, members of his staff, and many Continental soldiers described this event in terms of God’s special protection of the army.

Was God’s providence evident in this event? American Christians certainly believed that it was, but I doubt whether an English Christian would have thought so. Who had the better insight into God’s purposes?

Wanted relies on so many dubious premises to advance its plot that it’s a good think it moves so quickly you never have time to think about it. Between Angelina Jolie showcasing her ink covered flesh in various stages of dishabille and bullets whizzing in various stages of stop action camera work through human skulls, it’s possible, if unlikely, that the average viewer might not think to himself “Hey, this is pretty damned preposterous!”

But it is. Never mind all the “who’s killing who right now and how and why” business that makes up the slender thread of a story that weaves its way back and forth from homicides to hot tubs, complete with plenty of blood for the former and tomb-like wax coatings for the latter. These tubs, we are told, speed the healing process our poor hero seems to need just about every five minutes, never mind they also give us an opportunity to see a buck naked Jolie! (Albeit from a distance and it’s probably a “stunt rear” anyway.).

No, far more preposterous is the underlying premise of a thousand year old guild of weavers – that’s right, weavers! – whose, yeah sure, discovery of a secret code in their cloth led them to convert the guild into a fraternity of assassins. (“Uthor, look at this!” “What do you mean? Those are just mistakes in the weaving, you dolt!” “No, look! In binary code it spells out “Kill Sir Aldo!” “Ohmygawd! That’s amazing! There’s just one thing, though.” “What’s that?” “What the hell is binary code?”)

Now, in the hands of, say, Umberto Eco this is the sort of idea that could lead to a soporific 1,500 page doorstop littered with twenty or thirty obscure quotes per page in equally obscure, dead or dying languages. In the hands of Russian director Timur Bekmambetov, however, it’s as good an excuse as any for a popcorn flick that after the first reel almost literally grabs the viewer by the throat and never lets go. Okay, so your popcorn might get a little blood on it along the way. It’s a small price to pay for the ride, don’t you think?

Bekmambetov, by the way, also directed the sadly under-viewed but beautiful 2004 Night Watch, a gothic action film well worthy of a rental even if you’re not all that into vampires. Back to Wanted, however, Jolie puts in a satisfyingly sex-drenched performance here and the rest of the casting is very strong and, at least to Constant Viewer, a bit of a surprise. CV’s appreciation of James McAvoy rose appreciably after his work in what was really the best picture of 2007 (the Golden Globe folks were right, the Academy was wrong), Atonement.

But CV wouldn’t have thought of McAvoy as an action flick protagonist notwithstanding his perfect casting as the uber-nebbish cubicle slave we find at the beginning of the movie. Well, CV was wrong and unlike those wimpy film reviewers you’ll find elsewhere he is man enough to admit it. Rounding out the cast we find Morgan Freeman as the head of the assassin’s guild, Thomas Kretschmann as the rogue assassin, Cross, and the recently omnipresent Terence Stamp in a small but important role towards the end of the film. Not a ringer in the lot of them.

If CV were in the star awarding business, Wanted would come in at somewhere around 7 out of 10 stars. (Speaking of which, did you ever wonder why those previously mentioned wimpy film reviewers set up a 4 or 5 star scale and then go and award half-stars? What the hell is a half-star and why don’t they just double their unit of measurement in the first place?) And, of course, those are summer movie stars, not autumn Oscar contender stars, too. Okay, so there are better movies playing right now. But the audience actually applauded several times at the showing CV attended and, let’s face it, there are far, far worse movies out there, too. Hey, by all accounts the worst one out there at the moment isn’t even directed by M. Night Shyamalan.

Previously I discussed the Reverend Peter Marshall’s work here. Rev. Marshall is a fairly big figure in “Christian America” circles. From what I know of his work, it’s pretty shoddy. He wrote a classic in that idiom entitled “The Light and the Glory.” Here is how Dr. Gregg Frazer describes that work in his PhD thesis from Claremont Graduate University:

It became the classic text of that camp. Its historiography is abominable; it is a collection of speculations, suppositions, personal musings, and “insights” with little or no proof or documentation for extraordinary claims. p. 38.

In my earlier post, I noted Marshall, and his coauthor David Manuel are working on a revised version of this book, to be published sometime in 2009. Somewhat to their credit, they are attempting to improve their level of scholarship. Relying on Peter Lillback’s work on George Washington, Marshall notes they will no longer endorse George Washington’s spurious “Daily Sacrifice” Prayerbook (of which by the way Pat Robertson’s CBN apparently endorses the validity).

Good for them, but apparently you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Continue Reading »

From the Washington Post:

Hundreds of artists, scientists and visitors from three wildly different cultures — Texas, NASA and the isolated Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan — converged Wednesday at the opening of the Smithsonian Folklife Festival on the National Mall. . . .

The traditional arts contrast sharply with the high-tech innovations nearby in the NASA exhibit, which celebrates the space agency’s 50th anniversary and gives a glimpse of planning for future lunar and Mars missions. While it may seem odd for the folklife festival to feature a government agency, organizers said they have often focused on the cultures of specific occupations, including the White House and the U.S. Forest Service. They said NASA offers many stories and contributions to the wider U.S. culture.

“You’re dealing with something that’s almost a mythic occupation — exploring the heavens,” Kurin said. “If this was another society, you’d be talking about a cult of mystics and oracles.”

That is sort of a meaningful difference, isn’t it? Not to be a cultural chauvinist or anything, but in our culture, this stuff isn’t make-believe anymore. That’s what’s great about modern technological culture, whether it’s space exploration or just curing diseases down here on earth. We do the stuff humanity’s always wished it could do. It works whether you believe in it or not. And it’s open to people regardless of gender, race, language, or metaphysical belief system.

Check it out here. And yes, that is the guy from WKRP in Cincinnati, the late great Gordon Jump.

I hate to admit that when I was younger I watched waaaaaay too much TV which helps me especially appreciate Family Guy, the creator of which Seth MacFarlane is likewise my age and watched way too many episodes of shows like this when he was growing up (and often incorporates those references into his show). Fortuitously, given that “Family Guy” is one of the most popular programs of my students, it helps me form a meaningful connection when I do my best to “edutain” them. In education, never underestimate the value of a good Simpsons or Family Guy example.

Constant Viewer wishes he could share in the general enthusiasm over WALL-E. Sure, the animation is of the highest quality, the characters are sympathetic, the story is interesting and the film overall is beautifully executed, and yet… yet …

Herewith the basic story: We trashed Earth so badly 700 years ago that we simply built a humongous spaceship to take at least some folks off on what was supposed to be a five year luxury cruise while machines remained behind to clean up and the ecosystem began to restore itself. WALL-E is one such robot, specializing in scrap metal compacting and stacking and somehow or other it has kept itself running he has kept himself ‘alive’ all those years, still putting in a good day’s work but then repairing to his ‘apartment’ where he collects humanalia and watches an old VHS tape of Hello, Dolly! Meanwhile, EVE is a probe sent from the spaceship back to Earth. WALL-E is smitten and, as one thing leads to another, close encounters of the mechanical kind ensue.

Perhaps it was that damned video tape that spoiled it for CV. The thought of even a robot still watching Barbara Streisand (let alone Tommy Tune!) seven centuries from now is just too much to take. Okay, so WALL-E didn’t exactly have Netflix service and I suppose it could have been worse; say, a Pauly Shore movie or The Love Guru. But a little bit of whimsy goes a long way with CV and WALL-E dishes the stuff out by the tractor-load. Another thing. Sure it’s a cartoon, after all, and you’ve got to suspend disbelief at least as far as anthropomorphized robots go, but are we to believe [Warning: teeny-tiny spoilers!] that there has been technological progress in the past seven centuries accounting for the vastly different capabilities of WALL-E, on the one hand, and EVE, on the other, especially when both passengers and crew of the AXIOM have literally been waited on hand and foot by robots all those centuries? And given both how detached from physical contact and how blubberous we had become in deep space, where the hell did all those kiddies come from?

Finally, as amusing and even action packed as the thrilling conclusion is, it also stretches credulity even by movie, even by animated movie standards. Let’s put it this way to avoid any further spoilers: there better be a whole hell of a lot more of the prized possession that leads the ship’s Captain to return to Earth than we have any evidence for whatsoever until the Happily Ever After end credits begin to roll. Besides that, as romantic comedies go, CV gives EVE and WALL-E exactly zero chance of sharing in that Happily Ever After. Come on! Sure they”re both robots but otherwise they have absolutely nothing in common. I give them two, three centuries at most before they split up and there’s a bitter divorce and custody hearing in Robo-Court.

Go, take the kiddies. It’s a fun ride and you’ll get your money’s worth. But anyone who tells you WALL-E is as good as, say, Ratatouille or Finding Nemo, frankly has a screw loose.

I wanted to comment on Jason Kuznicki’s post on the Acton Institute’s The Birth of Freedom whose screening we both saw. His post brings to mind George Willis Cooke’s observations:

The doctrine of degrees, as taught by the Calvinists, was the spiritual side of the assertion of the divine right of kings. On the other hand, when the people claim the right to rule, they modify their theology into Arminianism. From an age of the absolute rule of the king comes the doctrine of human depravity; and with the establishment of democracy appears the doctrine of man’s moral capacity.

Continue Reading »

If you are an able bodied male resident of the U.S. between the ages of 17 and 45, are either a citizen or have declared an intention to become a citizen and are not already a member of the Armed Services (including the Reserves and the National Guard), Title 10 U.S.C. § 311 says you are, whether you know it or not, a member of the “unorganized militia.”

The unorganized militia doesn’t include any women nor does it exclude gay men unless Congress bought into the “gay men are sissies” (hence not “able bodied”) stereotype back in 1903 when it passed the Dick Act. I know, I know!

I, by the way, served honorably in the unorganized militia without so much as a single blot on my escutcheon – and you have no idea how hard it was to keep my escutcheon blotless all those years – and yet I received nary so much as an Honorable Discharge – and you have no idea how boring an honorable discharge can be — from those ingrates at the Department of Defense! Continue Reading »

Ask, and you shall receive. Concede, and you shall lose. The DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA ET AL. v. HELLER is in — and most of the news is good.

The Justices ruled that the language of the Second Amendment indicates its purpose is for militias, but that the amendment lacks language that limits the use of weapons to only the purpose. The Second Amendment is an individual right.

They also state that individual Americans can own commonly used firearms for self-defense purposes, but that they are not opening up the box on a host of other regulations involving bans on more exotic weapons, laws restricting felons and mentally-ill people, sales rules, concealed carry laws, and the like.

But they did rule that because the handgun is a common weapon of choice for self-defense, the DC ban on handguns is unconstitutional — and that includes rules for trigger locks or disassembly of the firearm because it would render the gun useless at the moment of self-defense.

But there is one caveat — one bit of bad news — that should be strategically instructive here. This bill Continue Reading »

Cordwainer Smith’s “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” takes place in a fictional era when government planning has succeeded so magnificently that people have begun to lose the will to live: All is planned, and all is successful. Individuals live for a predetermined length of time, but unlike in Logan’s Run, life expectancy has been radically extended — up to four hundred years in nearly all cases. Danger has been wiped out of human life, with diseases, accidents, and old age effectively eliminated.

And people are sick of it. Limitless abundance prevails, and as a result the urge to life has begun to disappear. Humanity lays dying, a victim of its own success. Something must be done. “Alpha Ralpha Boulevard” therefore comes at a pivotal moment in the fictional universe where nearly all of Smith’s fiction is set. Yet its story does not directly concern the great deeds done at the top, but rather a love affair between two ordinary people. Continue Reading »

There’s a very good chance that homosexuals will cease to exist, and soon. And the rest of you — You’ll cheer. Or at least you’ll breathe a little easier. You’ll be glad we’re gone.

No, it’s the truth. Parents overwhelmingly don’t want to have gay kids, and the science is getting better all the time. Eventually, there will be screenings in utero, and treatments, and it will all be a big relief to parents — never to have a kid like me. Never to have to worry.

After that, the only serious questions will be whether the treatment works on adults, too, and whether it’s ethical to force adults to take it. (And how well-armed and willing to fight the adult homosexuals may be.)

I considered these issues four years ago, when I saw that John Derbyshire had written the following:

A young woman in the late stages of pregnancy, or carrying a small infant, shows up at her doctor’s office. “Doctor,” she asks, “is there some kind of test you can do to tell me if my child is likely to become a homosexual adult?” The doctor says yes, there is. “And,” the woman continues, “suppose the test is positive — would that be something we can fix? I mean, is there some sort of medical, or genetic, or biochemical intervention we can do at this stage, to prevent that happening?” The doctor says yes, there is. “How much does the test cost? And supposing it’s positive, how much does the fix cost?” The doctor says $50, and $500. The woman takes out her checkbook.

Of course this is not happening anywhere in the U.S.A. right now. If my understanding of the state of current research is correct, however, it might very well be happening on a daily basis ten years from now.

It would also be a very miserable one for homosexuals, as they became an aging, fading cohort, with practically no younger people of their inclination to socialize with. The situation would also be self-reinforcing: As more and more parents took the test and got the fix, the loneliness facing homosexuals would become so dire that no person of conscience could think of raising a person who might become homosexual. The fix might even be applicable later in life, with adult homosexuals “converting” en masse.

In which case, there would be someone, somewhere, who was the last homosexual. What a situation! Think what a playwright or a novelist could do with it!

The legal logic is ironclad: Either parents have the right to make medical decisions for their children (an ancient and indisputable right), or else the gay community will be found to have some collective right to impose gay kids on parents who would otherwise prefer to be rid of them (a fanciful creation without any legal warrant). Want to lay bets on which way that one will turn out?

It’s a fairly good test, I think, of my own political beliefs, for there is nothing in libertarianism that forbids the extinction of homosexuals through technology. I have to let it go, hate it though I may — and I do. I think there’s something wrong, perhaps not at the level of government, but at least at the level of individual respect for human diversity, to the urge to wipe out all human differences. We will have lost something of our wonder, when this difference disappears.

Today’s young people more likely than not think that it’s brave, and kind of cool, that gays and lesbians are getting married in California, Massachusetts, and a few other places around the world. Soon, though, they may have the ability to rescue their children from homosexuality — and they will think of it as a rescue. Then another generation will grow up, who will look on gays and lesbians as being kind of like polio victims: Yes, they’re human, of course, but what a shame for them. And what a shame that we had to make such strange accommodations for them, in our laws, even. It’s a good thing no one has to suffer like that anymore.

But it’s not suffering, I’ll say to them from my grave. Will they listen?

I don’t know. I’m simply glad I won’t be the last living homosexual, and that I have already found a lifelong love, with whom I can watch the coming extinction at some degree of remove.

The Atlantic recently posted a fascinating article by John Staddon entitled “Distracting Miss Daisy.” Staddon, who grew up in Great Britain, argues that the seemingly ubiquitous presence of stop signs and speed limits on U.S. roads actually distracts drivers’ attention, conditions them into relying more on compliance than concentrating on actual road conditions and leads, as a result, to more accidents.

These are the sorts of arguments that warm the cockles of a libertarian’s heart assuming, of course, that libertarian hearts have cockles. Continue Reading »

I’d like to thank Dr. John Fea of Messiah College and the Religion in American History blog for his kind words on my blog research and plugging American Creation. If I may return the favor, Religion in American History is a great, informative blog, one I regularly check. Fea writes:

One of their contributors, Jon Rowe, is the most dogged critic of the Christian America thesis I have ever run across and I have learned much from reading his own blog over the last few years.

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