The Dilettante's Dilemma

What Good Health Is For

Posted on November 4, 2013 by hessd

So I’ve been thinking about getting old and what I ought to do about it.

The model that has suggested itself comes from all the 10K races I have run over the years. I should say that for me, even the 10 K is not run to beat anyone, so I don’t really run with a strategy in mind. For me, I regret to say, the 10K is an endurance race. I know there are some who treat it as a long sprint.

The way I run, there is a “middle of the race” caste of mind. I think “am I going to be able to keep this pace up?” I think, “Am I going to crash at the end and walk ignominiously across the finish line?” I think, “Is there any chance I could attach myself to that group of runners, up ahead there, and get some extra pull from them?” All these questions are based on extending my resources to meet the challenges of the race. That is their common focus.

Then, at some point near the end, a change comes over me. It isn’t something I do. It is something that I notice has occurred. This change is based on two ideas. The first is that I have often thought, very soon after crossing the finish line, that I did not run as daring a race as I now know I could have. I think back on how discouraging that hill was and how, with just a little grit, I could have powered past it. The second is that I am determined to cross the finish line with not very much left in the tank. What, after all, is the point of saving resources until you have no use for them? These questions have a different focus from the first set. These questions are based on satisfying my criteria for running a race I am proud of, from the standpoint of having finished the race.

That shift which I have so often experienced in running is now taking place in my life generally. It is not, please remember, something I do. It is something I notice. I think I am catching myself thinking back on “the race” now that the finish line is in sight and wondering whether I have really used all the resources I had. I don’t want to be looking back on my life and thinking that I could have done a lot more if I hadn’t been so careful about husbanding my resources

This line of thought got a boost today as my brother, Mark, sent me a quote from George Bernard Shaw: “Use your health even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for.”

You can probably see that “that’s what it’s for” captures my interest in using the remaining resources to meet the remaining tasks. On the other hand, this isn’t a “bucket list.” Nothing against bucket lists—those things you want to be sure to do before you kick the bucket.[1] The direction pointed by “what my health is for” is, as you can probably see, the same direction as “how am I going to feel about the way I ran the race.” On the other hand, running a 10K race has only to do with time and distance. “Using myself appropriately” is more complicated.

How do I do that? I have three things in mind.

The first is authenticity. By this age, I really have become who I am. I want to look back on my life from some mythological standpoint and approve of who I was during that last stretch to the finish line. I want to judge that I did continue to be true to who I was—or at least as nearly as my declining capabilities allowed me to be.

The second is service. There are actually some things I am really good at. Some have grown naturally out of the way I have spent my life. I know a lot more about politics than most people do, for instance, having taught it and studied it and even practiced it. I know how to hold a political frame of reference in place so that people can locate their own positions with reference to it and think more clearly about their own values and commitments. Holding that frame steady is a service to them and I will be proud if I have done it well. That same thing is true, it turns out, for a theological frame of reference. My lifetime of study and my good fortune in finding mentors have given me a strong theological frame of reference that I really don’t feel I need to justify. I can just hold it steady and let people—former fundamentalists, in many cases—make whatever use of it they need to make.

Other notable resources have grown out of experiences I have had, especially hard experiences. I am a veteran of a failed marriage, for instance, and I am a widower as well. Those two experiences have enabled me to look people in the eye and say, “I know what you are talking about.” They believe me when I say that and that enables me to provide a service to them. They can say to me things they would never say to someone they think would not understand.

The third is a willingness to keep growing. I do want to keep my life in continuity with the person I have been—authenticity is what I call that—but I also want to transcend my thought patterns and behavior patterns when they no longer serve me. I want to keep paying attention to the vital question “Is it working?” I want to be willing to change, when necessary, when “what used to work” doesn’t work anymore.

I do want to continue the behaviors that I called “service” above, but those same behaviors will not always really be “service.”[2] It has often been a service to hold a frame of reference in place, but there may come a time when all out full-throated advocacy is what is called for. I hope it doesn’t come to that. I’m not really any good at it. But if it does come to that, I hope I will move my habitual caution out of the way and let ‘er rip.

I want to look back from that mythological standpoint after I have ended “the race” of my life and approve the race I ran. That means being willing to do new things, even at my age, when the old things aren’t worth doing anymore or have become impediments to the work of others. The constant element, I hope you see, is that I want to look back and approve of the work I did and the choices I made. Authenticity is a good thing, but it is not ultimately good. “Service” is a good thing, but it is not ultimately good. “Changing tactics” is a wonderful ability, but it might be just the wrong thing to do in the situation. All those change. Being proud of the judgments I made—even the misjudgments, if they were honest and courageous—is what does not change.

Finally, I want to confess that I do believe in providence. I believe that God has something in mind for how human life is going to turn out. I believe there are implications, in that plan, for what I, personally, ought to be doing.[3] I believe I am not at all likely to know what these providential twists and turns are at the time I am making the necessary judgments. That means I must act in circumstances where I don’t actually know what I am doing. I must act, but I don’t know what action is required. I am balanced on the existential razor’s edge.

On the other hand:

If [I could believe] that the context in which [I am] living and acting were the outworking of the loving purposes of a God who wills that [I act] in freedom and who will therefore [sustain me] in freedom, not permitting [me] to destroy [myself] or [my] loved ones, [I] could act freely.[4]

That’s how I reconcile the bewilderment of a belief in the unknowable providence of God and the need to make day to day decisions so I can look back on them and be satisfied. It’s tricky to hold both of those, I grant you, but it has worked so far.

[1] A metaphor made current by Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman (2007) in their movie of that name.

[2] Not everything the band does in “proving entertainment” is actually entertaining. Not everything the “security officers” do makes us more secure. Calling an act a “service” doesn’t really mean that it serves anyone’s interests.

[3] In my notion of the providence of God, “the right thing” is not necessarily the difficult thing or the costly thing to do. Sometimes, it is just the joyous performance of the tasks your life has prepared you to fulfill. People who think you are not doing what you should be doing on the grounds that you are having fun doing it don’t know how much God loves dilettantes.

[4] That is theologian Gordon D. Kaufman’s summary of just how “salvation” works within the Christian tradition. I love each and every word of it. Kaufman is one of the people I called “mentors” earlier although I never met him and although he changed his mind about a lot of his theology after he wrote this. I have altered the quotation only by changing all the third person plurals to first person singulars.

Posted in Getting Old, Living My Life | Tagged aging, authenticity, Providence, service | Leave a comment

Tanya Luhrmann, Halloween, and Ghost Pets

Posted on November 1, 2013 by hessd

I want to begin this consideration of paranormal experiences with the first line of the Wikipedia entry under T. M. Luhrman.[1]

“Tanya Marie Luhrmann (born 1959) is an American psychological anthropologist best known for her studies of modern-day witches, charismatic Christians, and psychiatrists.”

How could anyone not be drawn to a scholar who studies witches, charismatic Christians, and psychiatrists? And besides that, she studies charismatic Christians as an anthropologist studies an interesting local population. She is with them, she learns their language, she is trusted by them, but she is not one of them. Yet.

She is beginning to raise some concerns, however, and this post will be about those concerns. Here is her Halloween column, including some really good stuff about the origins of the seasonal celebration. Let’s start with the first two paragraphs.

When my dog Dorothea died — she was the first dog I’d chosen for myself, and she had looked at me in a certain way when I visited the shelter, making me feel that I could not leave without her — she left a nearly unbearable ache in my heart. Dogs do this: They hold joy and love and solace in a way humans can’t, and then they die. But after she died, I heard her. I was sitting at my desk and the sounds of her nails tap-tapping down the wood floor of the hall came to my ears, and only when I turned to look for her did I remember that she was gone. Sometimes I felt her presence, like a heaviness on my lap or at my side. Sometimes I still do.

It turns out that this is not uncommon. As many as 80 percent of those who lose loved ones report that they sense that person after death. These are real sensory events. People hear a voice; they feel a touch; they recognize a presence. A friend told me that a year after her husband’s death, she would still find him sitting on that bench in the park, waiting for her. She liked that. In fact, one of the central research findings in this area is that post-bereavement experiences are helpful. They’re also more likely to occur after long and happy marriages. (There appears to be no research yet on pet loss.)

The word I want you to see is “recognize,” in the fourth sentence of that second paragraph. “They recognize a presence,” Luhrmann says. Do they?

Luhrmann says she “heard” the sound of Dorothea’s nail tapping on the wood floor. Did she? What does it mean to “hear” something? Luhrmann says that she sometimes felt a heaviness on her lap. OK. Or she felt it “at her side.” That one makes me uncomfortable. How about you? Is the dog this man is petting “really there?” Does he know the dog is there?

These are, Luhrmann says, “real sensory events.” She means by that, I think, that her ears did actually record the sound of the tapping on the wood floor. I think Luhrmann would say that a properly placed sensor would show her ears hearing something. Actual neurons are used in this process. I think that’s what she means by a “real sensory event.”

So people “hear a voice.” I’m OK with that. I myself would say I thought I heard a voice, but perhaps that is just a matter of rhetorical style. “They feel a touch.” OK. They “recognize a presence.” Uh oh. This might just be a casual use on her part, but I don’t think so. I think her choice of “recognize” means that the person who was sensed was “there,” in some way, and was the person he or she was “sensed” to be. That’s what I would mean if I wrote that line.

Not to get all lexy or anything[2] but here’s the Oxford English Dictionary on “recognize.” This is meaning 5a: “To know again. To perceive to be identical with something previously known.” The word comes apart easily. To cognize = “to know” and re- has its common (but not invariant) meaning of “again.” The difficulty is with “identical with something previously known.” In context, this means “identical with my late husband,” and that means “is” my late husband.

Luhrmann is not, herself, a charismatic; she is an anthropologist. She is a scientist. It is her job to say that her informants say that they “heard a voice.” It is her job to say that the informants believed that the voice belonged to a well-known relative who had died some time ago. When she says they are right in believing what they do—and that is what “recognize” means to me—I think she has stepped over a line. She has, at the very least, taken me out of my comfort zone.

Still, lines like the one Luhrmann stepped over, don’t always stay where we draw them. What causes the pain from a “phantom limb.” We have long known that people can feel pain from limbs that are no longer there. This pain is “a real sensory event.” It means that the neurons what once had the job of passing along to the brain the events in the arm have continued to send messages about that arm when there is no longer an arm. This isn’t paranormal activity. Ways have been found to successfully treat phantom pain, at least some of the time.

I don’t think that’s what Luhrmann is writing about.

I could be helped a good deal if Luhrmann would separate the sensory event and the interpretation of the event. Luhrmann feels a heaviness on her lap. It is like the heaviness she used to feel when her dog, Dorothy, lay there. Her interpretation of that sensory event is what is at stake in her column. Is she remembering Dorothy? Is she recalling the times she sat there with Dorothy on her lap? Does she think that Dorothy is there right now, producing the same sense of weight she always did, although Dorothy no longer has a body? Or no longer has a visible body. Or something.

I am not, as you can tell, attracted to paranormal interpretations. “Feeling the weight in her lap” is fine with me. Her neurons are doing what neurons do. The part of the brain that responds first identifies that weight as consistent with or evocative of those times with Dorothy. But then another part of the brain says, “Wait. Could this be?”[3]

I say No. Luhrmann says No sometimes and Yes other times. That’s the way I read her. Her expression “recognize a presence” in the second quoted paragraph is a Yes response as I see it. Do you see it that way?

[1] Also to distinguish my use of Wikipedia from Sen. Rand Paul’s use of it. According to the clips I saw on the Rachel Maddow show yesterday, he looks right at the teleprompter and reads whole paragraphs of Wikipedia material as if it were his own. I don’t want anyone to think I am doing that.

[2] Proposed new word, belonging to the family of “truthiness.” I could have said “lexicographical,” sure, but my son, Doug, and I are working our way through Anne Curzan’s lectures on linguistics and I am feeling daring.

[3] In other writings, Luhrmann emphasizes that some people have more natural capacity for attributions like this and that you can get better at it if you work at certain skills. Those distinctions are not what this column is about.

Posted in Living My Life, Paying Attention, ways of knowing | Tagged ghosts, Halloween, paranormal experiences, spirit presence | 1 Comment

The Five Big Issues in Supreme Court’s Current Term: Presidential Power

Posted on October 16, 2013 by hessd

This is the fifth and last of a series of posts on the issues that Adam Liptak has identified as prominent on the agenda of the Supreme Court in its current session. Liptak listed campaign finance, abortion, affirmative action, prayer and presidential power. I have dealt with them in that order. The remaining issue is presidential power.

This series of posts has been about political ideology—liberalism and conservatism—but it has approached ideology through a series of court cases. That means that a caution is in order. It is this: principles are not cases. Ideologies are notoriously general; cases notoriously particular. That’s important.

I can say I am a liberal (I am) and look at the likely implications of my liberalism, but when a particular case comes up, some difficulties can come up with it. It may not be clear just what a liberal ought to want from the Court in this case. Do the proper resolution of this case and the confirmation of my political ideology always point in the same direction? No, actually, they don’t always. They don’t today, in fact.

The questions I have been asking in this series are: a) being a liberal, what outcome do I expect to want; b) as I read the case, what decision seems fair and reasonable to me; and c) do my preferences for this case and my political position fit nicely together? Might I, for instance, have to question my liberalism on the basis of this case?

This is a family sort of game. You are all invited to play along. Pick the ideological name you apply to yourself, read the case on http://www.oyez.com and choose what action you want the Court to take, and then reflect on your ideology in the light of your decision.

The case that brings the presidential power question to us is National Labor Relations Board v. Noel Canning. The Oyez summary for this case is long and complicated and beside the point. You can see it here if you are curious. What follows is the Hess Summary.

Noel Canning, a distributor of Pepsi products committed an action that the Teamsters Union called “an unfair labor practice.” The National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)—consisting at the time of the one (1) member who had been duly confirmed by the U. S. Senate—agreed that it was unfair. Canning pointed out that there must be a quorum for the Board to make any rulings at all and that one member, on a five member panel, does not constitute a quorum. There were two other members on the Board at the time—a total of three, an official quorum—but President Obama had appointed these other two as “recess appointments.”

The power of the President to make “recess appointments” is what this case is about. Or, to look at it from the other side, the power of the Republicans in the Senate to keep the President from making any recess appointments at all is what this case is about. Let’s look at that side first.

The Republicans would really rather there would not be a National Labor Relations Board. If there has to be one, they would rather it be composed of pro-business, anti-union members. President Obama is deeply beholden to the unions for their support of his candidacy and for that reason, among others, he has been nominating pro-union members to the NLRB.

Is there anything the Senate Republicans can do to prevent the President from doing this? Of course. There are lots of ways and they have been used over the years by whichever party is in the minority in the Senate. But on this round, the Republicans came up with a new one. Here’s how it goes. The President is constitutionally permitted to make an appointment while the Senate is in recess. The way to block this power is for the Senate never to go to recess.

But wouldn’t that be a huge inconvenience for the Senators from, say, Oregon, who really want to and need to “go home” during the Senate recess? No, not at all. You see, the Senate doesn’t really need to be “in session.” The Republicans can prevent the Senate from recessing by lodging an objection to it. Then they can ask a Republican Senator from a nearby state to briefly open and close a faux “session of the Senate.” No business is conducted. Only the presiding Senator is present in the chamber. Imagine that this is the guy. The Senate members (99 of the 100 of them) are gone, but still the Senate is not “in recess.” If the Senate is never in recess, President Obama cannot make recess appointments.

That’s how it is done. The Supreme Court is being asked, in NLRB v. Noel Canning, to decide whether this one Senator’s performance means that the Senate is “in session.” If the Senate is in session, then the President cannot make recess appointments. If the President cannot make recess appointments, then he did not really appoint those other two members of the NLRB. If he did not really appoint those members, then there is only one member of the NLRB and there is not a quorum. If there is not a quorum, then the NLRB did not really agree that Noel Canning violated the rights of the Teamsters, as they alleged in their suit.

As I come to my liberal moment in this post, I have to admit that when the system is this broken, it is hard even to know what to want. Denying the constitutional powers of the President to make recess appointments is a serious constraint on his powers. I don’t want any President, especially one I like, to be deprived of those powers. On the other hand, I don’t want a President to be able to declare, on his own authority, that the Senate is in recess, when according to the rules of the Senate, they are not in recess.

There is, in other words, no good solution to the issue as it stands. There is no liberal solution and no conservative solution. Mitch McConnell, the minority leader of the Senate and the architect of the faux sessions strategy, can win if the Court agrees that the Senate really was in session. That would be a win for any Senate minority leader from here on, Democrat or Republican. Barack Obama could win if the Court agrees that a faux session is not really a session and that if faux sessions are all that is going on, the Senate is actually in recess, no matter what they call it. That would be a win for any succeeding President and would increase any President’s power over the Senate.

I don’t like either of those. We lose—the American people lose—either way. It’s hard not to hope that President Obama wins but there is no way for President Obama to win without “all succeeding Presidents” winning and I am pretty sure I am not going to like all the Presidents that succeed President Obama and I don’t want they all to be empowered.

I want the Presidents I like to have more power and the Presidents I don’t like to have less power. That is not what the Court is going to decide. I’m pretty sure of that.

Posted in Politics | Tagged Mitch McConnell, NLRB, President Obama, recess appointments, union influence | Leave a comment

The Five Big Issues in Supreme Court’s Current Term: Prayer

Posted on October 15, 2013 by hessd

This is the fourth of five posts. I have taken the issues in the order that Adam Liptak listed them in his New York Times article, so I have considered campaign finance, abortion, affirmative action. Today we look at prayer.

The most substantial caution for this series is that this post considers ideology, mostly, but it does so by looking at Supreme Court cases. As everyone knows, however, principles are not cases. That’s important.

My standard set of questions would be: a) being a liberal, what outcome do I expect to want; b) as I read the case, what decision seems fair and reasonable to me; and c) do my preferences for this case and my political position fit nicely together? Might I, for instance, have to question my liberalism on the basis of this case?

This is a family sort of game. You are all invited to play along. Pick the ideological name you apply to yourself, read the case on www.oyez.com and choose what action you want the Court to take, and then reflect on your ideology in the light of your decision.

A short way to summarize the guarantees of religious guarantees of the First Amendment is that it provides freedom of religion—freedom for believers to engage in their own religion’s practices—and freedom from religion; no practice of government, in other words, favors one religion over another or “religion” over “irreligion.” Note that irreligion is not pictured on the graphic. For that, you have to go to the last one in this post.

Liberals, when they are thinking of freedom of speech, favor everyone’s right—religious people as much as secular people— to say nearly anything. When we are thinking of freedom of religion, instead of freedom of speech, we are very wary of religious speech practiced by the government. That’s what this case is about. Since this case is about religion, I would anticipate being opposed to religious exercises by governments.

Conservatives come at this differently. They start with the society, not the polity. They note that there are many communities in the U. S., and even some states, where there are more Christians than there are members of any other religious faith, including, they point out, “secularism.”[1] Why, they wonder, in a Christian town—a town where a majority of residents is Christian—can we not have a Christian practice at the meetings of our town council.

Here are the facts, as Oyez describes them, ending, as always, with the question.

Facts of the Case

The town of Greece, New York, is governed by a five-member town board that conducts official business at monthly public meetings. Starting in 1999, the town meetings began with a prayer given by an invited member of the local clergy. The town did not adopt any policy regarding who may lead the prayer or its content, but in practice, Christian clergy members delivered the vast majority of the prayers at the town’s invitation. In 2007, Susan Galloway and Linda Stephens complained about the town’s prayer practices, after which there was some increase in the denominations represented.

In February 2008, Galloway and Stephens sued the town and John Auberger, in his official capacity as Town Supervisor, and argued that the town’s practices violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment by preferring Christianity over other faiths. The district court found in favor of the town and held that the plaintiffs failed to present credible evidence that there was intentional seclusion of non-Christian faiths. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit reversed and held that the practices violated the Establishment Clause by showing a clear preference for Christian prayers.

Question

Does the invocation of prayer at a legislative session violate the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment even in the absence of discrimination in the selection of prayer-givers and content?

The two perspectives are clearly presented in the Oyez account. The district court wondered whether there was an intentional seclusion of non-Christian faiths.[2] They found that there was not. I imagine that they counted the percentage of Christians in town and then the percentage of prayers that reflected Christian presuppositions and found they entirely appropriate. That’s the decision conservatives would like. The court of appeals found that the pattern of prayers showed a marked preference for Christian prayers and that preference is just what the Framers were trying to prevent when they said there should be no “establishment of religion.” That’s the decision liberals would like.

So what do I learn about my liberalism by thinking about my reflexive vote for the U. S. Supreme Court to agree with the court of appeals? Not a lot. Being a Christian myself, I have no worries that “religious perspectives” are going to take over society. I think that might be really good for society, depending on what the alternatives are, but it would be really bad for the government, which is supposed to be the government for us all. But being a Christian, I am not as wary of Christian presuppositions as members of other religions or no religion would be.

I think this is a lot like knowing what foods contain gluten. I am quite sure I would be more aware of foods that contain gluten or that have touched anything containing gluten if my aversion to gluten were extreme and disabling.

For liberals, religious practices by governmental bodies are “gluten.”

[1] Whether “secularism” is a “faith” or not is an interesting and complicated question. The Court has answered yes in some contexts and no in others.

[2] I would have said an “exclusion,” but maybe “seclusion” has some formal meaning I don’t know about. Since this is Oyez, it probably isn’t a typo.

Posted in Politics | Tagged culture, first amendment, irreligion, prayer, religion, secularism | Leave a comment

The Five Big Issues in Supreme Court’s Current Term: Affirmative Action

Posted on October 13, 2013 by hessd

This is the third of five posts. I covered the Court’s opportunity to deal with campaign reform the day before yesterday; yesterday it was abortion; today it is affirmative action. All five issues and the associated cases are drawn from this article by Adam Liptak in the New York Times.

If we are going to talk about political ideology and court decisions, we need to remember that principles are not cases. I can say I am a liberal (I am) and look at the likely implications of that position, but when a particular case comes up, some difficulties can come up with it. It may not be clear just what a liberal ought to want from the Court in an affirmative action case. Do the proper resolution of the case and the reaffirmation of my political ideology always point in the same direction? Alas, they don’t always; then I have to choose between them.

The questions that are applicable to all these cases are these: a) being a liberal, what social and political outcome do I expect to want; b) as I read the case, what decision seems fair and reasonable to me; and c) do my preferences for this case and my political position fit nicely together? Might I, for instance, have to question my liberalism on the basis of this case?

For me, the answer to the first question has to be ambiguous. So what is “affirmative action?” First, it is a euphemism. Nothing wrong with that. Second, it means “don’t just stop discriminating against racial and ethnic minorities,” but rather take positive steps to favor those minorities. President Kennedy’s language in Executive Order 10925 (1961) says both that government employers “not discriminate against any employee…because of race, creed, color, or national origin,” but also that government employers should “take affirmative action to ensure” that they employed and treated without such regard.

If you have only the welfare of racial and ethnic minorities (and, currently, of women) in mind, then the negative phrasing (stop discriminating against) and the positive phrasing (take actions to ensure) are equivalent. But then, who really has only the welfare of those minorities in mind?

And then there is this: if the government takes positive action to ensure the employment of those people, what happens when there is not enough room for (in college admissions) or not enough contracts for (in government contracting) my people? Is “not being discriminated for” really the same as “being discriminated against?”

And then there is this: how will you know when you are done? Is “affirmative action” forever? Is it until some balance in employment and admissions questions is reached? If we are waiting for “balance,” have we specified a quota system of some sort?

And then there is this: is admission to a university by affirmative action going to tar you for the rest of your life. Is it like being hired because you are related to the boss? Even if you show yourself to be worthy by your own good work, will you ever be judged just on your own work or will the conditions of your admission or your employment always be held against you?[1]

So with all my initial ambivalence as a liberal, what about the case itself? This is Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action. Here is what Oyez.com has to say about it.

Facts of the Case

In November 2006 election, a majority of Michigan voters supported a proposition to amend the state constitution to prohibit “all sex- and race-based preferences in public education, public employment, and public contracting.” The day after the proposition passed, a collection of interest groups and individuals formed the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration and Immigration Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary (Coalition). The Coalition sued the governor and the regents and boards of trustees of three state universities in district court by arguing that the proposition as it related to public education violated the Equal Protection Clause.

Question

Does an amendment to a state’s constitution to prohibit race- and sex-based discrimination and preferential treatment in public university admission decisions violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?

Answer: well, kind of. If the equal protection clause requires affirmative action or if it allows affirmative action, then the voters of Michigan should not be allowed to annul it because of their local preferences. That’s just nullification, a very popular pre-Civil War response in the South. But the Court has been squeezing down harder and harder on just how a goal should be defined (quotas are bad) and what purposes justify involvement by the federal government (“racial balance” is bad, but “diversity” is good).

So what does this do to my liberalism? It puts a dent in it. I’m not sure I know any white liberals who have deep misgivings about affirmative action. This is one of those questions where the society really ought to solve it by not being racist (or sexist or any of the other –ists). That’s the only really good solution. But if society doesn’t solve it and people call on government to solve it, it is going to be clunky and expensive and confusing. That’s what it is now.

[1] You might, in that regard, want to consult Stephen Carter’s Reflections of an Affirmative Action Baby. Carter describes himself as both a “beneficiary” and a “victim” of affirmative action.

Posted in Politics | Tagged affirmative action, nullification, racial quotas, racism, Schuette, sexism | Leave a comment

The Five Big Issues of the Supreme Court’s Current Term: Abortion

Posted on October 12, 2013 by hessd

This is the second of five posts. I covered the Court’s opportunity to deal with campaign reform yesterday; today, it is abortion’s turn. All five issues and the associated cases are drawn from this article by Alan Liptak in the New York Times.

Principles are not cases. I can say I am a liberal (I am) and look at the likely implications of that position, but when a particular case comes up, some difficulties can come up with it. It may not be clear just what a liberal ought to want from the Court in this case. Do the proper resolution of the case and the reaffirmation of my political ideology always point in the same direction?

My questions would be: a) being a liberal, what outcome do I expect to want; b) as I read the case, what decision seems fair and reasonable to me; and c) do my preferences for this case and my political position fit nicely together? Might I, for instance, have to question my liberalism on the basis of this case?

My best characterization of the availability of abortion is borrowed from Bill Clinton’s 1992 said abortions should be “safe, legal, and rare.” The legality criterion means that a woman and her doctor should be free to choose the procedure they think best until the third trimester, when the state acquires an interest in a new citizen who will one day register and vote. Since abortions will be performed, whether they are legal or not, the safety criterion requires that abortions not needlessly endanger the lives of the women who are undergoing them. The rarity criterion meant, in 1992, that abortion ought not to be chosen very often. It isn’t a method of birth control; it is a cataclysmic event that should be chosen only seldom.[1]

So knowing that it is an abortion question and that liberals (including me) want to see the right to choose an abortion to be protected, I would anticipate that I would want the Court to rule negatively. I want them to tell Oklahoma to get on with the process of protecting the constitutional rights of the women of Oklahoma.

Of the two abortion cases that will come before the Supreme Court this term, Cline is more interesting. Here is what Oyez has to say about it.

Facts of the Case

In 2011, the Oklahoma state legislature passed a bill that restricts the use of abortion-inducing drugs to the uses described on their Federal Drug Administration (FDA) labels. The law criminalizes the use of these drugs in alternative combinations, known as “off-label uses,” that have been found to produce safer, less costly abortions. Before the law took effect, the Oklahoma Coalition for Reproductive Justice and Nova Health Systems sued the state in state district court and sought an injunction to prohibit enforcement of the law. They argued that the law effectively banned abortions in violation of both the state and federal constitutions. The state district court held the law unconstitutional and the state officials appealed to the Oklahoma Supreme Court. The Oklahoma Supreme Court held that the state law conflicted with Supreme Court rulings that protected a woman’s right to seek an abortion and was therefore unconstitutional.

Question

Did the Oklahoma Supreme Court err in holding that the state law restricting the administration of abortion-inducing drugs to the uses described on their FDA labels conflicts with Supreme Court rulings that protect a woman’s constitutional right to seek an abortion?

The “Cline” in the name of the case is Terry L. Cline, Ph.D., Oklahoma Commissioner of Health. [2] Presumably, he is the person who would carry out the Oklahoma legislature’s ban on “off-label” uses and I’d guess that is why he is named in the suit. This battle in one of the innumerable detours built by conservative states to get around the roadblock Roe v. Wade erected. The Oklahoma Supreme Court noted that implementing this law would conflict with prior rulings of the U. S. Supreme Court and that, therefore, Dr. Cline should not implement them.

Now that I have read about the case, I look at the formulation of the question. “Did the Oklahoma Supreme Court err…?” My answer is Yes, they did err and they should be forced to end that particular error. The legislature in Oklahoma, in other words, may not take away rights guaranteed to the women of Oklahoma by the U. S. Constitution (as interpreted by the U. S. Supreme Court).

I didn’t really learn a lot about my liberalism from this case. I am not an abortion rights activist—or, really, any other kind of activist[3]–but I think the current position of the law is clear and women ought to be protected in their right to choose legal remedies.

The next issue is affirmative action. You might start consulting your liberalism/conservatism to see where you might wind up.

[1] The rarity criterion was not met, in Bill Clinton’s formulation, but the current Republican practice of shutting down any clinic where an abortion could be performed and de-funding Planned Parenthood. Those practices do make abortions rarer, in those states that have pursued those measures, but they don’t make them rarer in other states and they don’t make them safer at all.

[2] By the way, I chose this picture from “images” after I had googled “abortion.” You can scarcely imagine the graphic choices I had on that page. You may thank me now for choosing this one.

[3] With the possible exception of apostrophe abuse and expressions like “very unique.”

Posted in Politics | Tagged abortion, off-label use, privacy rights, rights of the unborn, U. S. Supreme Court | Leave a comment

The Five Big Issues in the Supreme Court’s Current Term: Campaign Finance

Posted on October 11, 2013 by hessd

This is the first of five posts. Each of the five issues gives you an opportunity to ask yourself, “Just what do I mean when I say I am a liberal or a conservative (or whatever designation you use for yourself)?” It’s a question worth asking. You might not be sure what label to use. If you do use one label consistently, you might not be sure just how that applies to concrete situations.

I can ask the question more simply of myself, since I am a garden variety liberal. My questions would be: a) being a liberal, how do you imagine you will respond to today’s issue (campaign finance); b) having read about McCutcheon v. FED, what do you think ought to be done; and c) does this position confirm or challenge your idea of yourself as a liberal?

I’m going to be using Adam Liptak’s article in the New York Times as my information source (here it is) about the current term of the court and www.oyez.com as my information source about each of the cases. Today’s issue is campaign finance.

Being a liberal, I am bothered by how much influence wealthy people have in our elections. I don’t like the way they dominate the lobbying of Congress either, but that isn’t today’s topic. The Supreme Court’s standard—one man, one vote—in Reynolds v. Simms (1964) seems like a good one to me. “One dollar, one vote,” which is what happens to the political system when unlimited amounts of money may be dumped into it and candidacies bought and sold in from of God and everyone, seems like a bad standard.

For that reason, the Congress passed the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act in 2002, putting two kinds of limits on how much money could be given in a campaign and to whom. In the 2010—2011 election cycle, Shaun McCutcheon wanted to give more money—in the aggregate—than the law allowed. Here are the basic facts of McCutcheon v. FEC as presented by www.oyez.com, the easiest to use of the Supreme Court sites.

http://www.oyez.org/cases/2010-2019/2013/2013_12_536

Since the Federal Election Commission is responsible for enforcing the provisions of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act, McCutcheon sued them. His case is set to be heard by the Supreme Court this term.

McCutcheon wants to go the wrong direction, according to my values. He wants to increase the amount of money wealthy people can invest in politics and I would like to decrease it. That’s where my liberalism brings me. So I hope the Court will decide against him and that the aggregate limits for political donations will stay where they are. As I reflect on my political ideology, as it show up in this case, I think I got it right. I’m liberal.

Posted in Politics | Tagged conservatism, democracy, federal elections commission, liberalism, money in politics, plutocracy | Leave a comment

God Loves the U. S. Senate

Posted on October 8, 2013 by hessd

What if the way out of the political crisis turns out to have nothing at all to do with character? Would that be embarrassing? Would God be surprised?

Dr. Barry C. Black is the Chaplain of the U. S. Senate and he has gotten a lot of attention recently by giving the assembled senators a tongue-lashing during the morning prayer. Here is an account from the New York Times, but everyone covered it. We could ask why the Senate should have a morning prayer, I suppose, but that’s not the line of thought I have in mind here.

Here are five things that could conceivably happen.

1. The government fails completely to meet its obligations and through that event, people learn that they don’t need the federal government nearly as much as they had been told they did. A wholesale swing to government by the states and by local communities follows.

2. The integrity of the caucuses is shown to be faulty and new tough measures of party discipline are initiated.[1] The change I am pointing to here would have Reid, McConnell, Boehner, and Pelosi exercise substantially more power over the votes of their members.

3. The possibility of a grand bargain exists, but it is compromised away by small adjustments made every month or so by cautious and uncertain politicians.

4. The Senators and Representatives take very seriously and very literally their promised to the voters and big contributors in their districts, and refuse to compromise or be guided by their party leaders in Washington.

5. Many members of the Senate are cut to the heart by the Chaplain’s words and decide they want to be saved from the madness and to acknowledge their transgressions and give up trying to sound reasonable, knowing that that will save them from the charges of “hypocrisy” and “smugness,” which Chaplain Black has leveled at them. But now that they have done those things—they have acknowledged their transgressions, they have been saved from the madness, they have given up the appearance of reasoned discourse—they discover that they have no idea what to do next.

Choosing Among the Five

If you take seriously the lectures Chaplain Black has administered in the guise of prayers, you will conclude that #5 is the best that can happen. And maybe it is, but I have two concerns about settling on that too early. The first is that I think there are better solutions, so I’m not all that happy about the Chaplain focusing on what seem inferior solutions. The second is that as God’s judgment is brought into the political mix on Capitol Hill, it is almost certainly going to focus on the character of individual members. I think that in this regard, God is not showing much political sense.

1. Are there better solutions?

Yes. But before we get there, let’s look at the kinds of solutions. Number one is a radical restructuring of the federal system of the sort that would make Rand Paul dance in the shower. It substitutes local (states, communities) action for national action. Nearly all the constituency groups supporting the Democratic Party lose big time in such a “solution.” Number three involves a very dangerous brinkmanship, but many believe that the desperation necessary for a grand bargain will not happen in small adjustments and will, in all likelihood, be prevented by small adjustments. Desperation is a plausible alternative.

Numbers two and four are alternative distributions of power. In number two, the voters in the states and districts lose power over their Senators and Representatives. They may be much better served by them, but if the caucuses work like teams, the plays aren’t going to be called by the spectators any more. The caucus leadership loses power over their members in number four and each legislator puts “the views of the home folks” first. That means that both “the needs of the country” and “the cooperation necessary to make Congress actually function” both get moved down and both of those seem important to me.

But God really likes number five best. I’m trying hard not to sound snide, but the fact is that I am not really comfortable that God likes the kind of solution pitched in number five. God likes good personal character and good personal behavior. I like a reconsideration of what the federal system requires and new ways of balancing the power of the caucuses with the authority of the constituents. I value a grand bargain very highly and I am quite sure that business as usual is not going to get us there. Good character doesn’t get us to any of those.

2. Is a focus on inner sins and outward attitudes going to help us move forward?

I really don’t think so. As favorable as I am toward the recognition of our sins and the value of attitude adjustment, I really think we need structural and political change very urgently and this brings us to my second concern. Any institutional chaplain—Dr. Black is not unusual in this respect—is going to ask people to focus on inner, spiritual flaws and on outer, interpersonal flaws. It might be that God wants structural change, but if so, that point is not going to be made from the podium by a religious professional. It will not.

Here’s one of Dr. Black’s prayers.

“Deliver us from the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable. Remove the burdens of those who are the collateral damage of this government shutdown, transforming negatives into positives as you work for the good of those who love you.”

I see that God opposed hypocrisy and removes the burdens of those who are inadvertently affected by the huffing and puffing of national politics. But surely you see that Dr. Black’s prayer that the Lord deliver us from governing by crisis is a blow to my hopes for the grand bargain. His prayer that all Senators become “responsible stewards of God’s bounty” does not recognize just what “responsible stewardship” implies is one of the major differences between the two parties. Ask the Environmental Defense Council and the American Coal Council if you don’t agree automatically. Does God favor one of those groups and hate the other? Does the Chaplain accept “stewardship” equally from those two groups?

I’m honestly not sure that Dr. Black has a clearer view than Dr. Hess does (that’s me) of what political outcomes God wants in this situation. I’m not entirely sure God has a favorite outcome that requires action by the U. S. Congress. I guess we should just all be grateful that I am not the Senate Chaplain. But for shine the light of God’s judgment on policy questions, do we really need a Senate Chaplain?

[1] Each party has a gathering of its members in each house of Congress, although the Republicans call their caucus a “conference” for some reason. That means that there is a Senate Democratic caucus, presided over by Majority Leader Harry Reid; a Senate Republican caucus, presided over by Mitch McConnell; a House Republican caucus, leadership of which alternates between Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Canton, depending on what the issue is; and a House Democratic caucus, presided over by former Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Posted in Politics, Theology | Tagged Chaplain Barry Black, personal morality, political reform | Leave a comment

Still a Family

Posted on October 7, 2013 by hessd

The men in this picture are the family among whom I grew up. Our parents died nearly thirty years ago, and we have related to each other differently since then. We have been much closer since then. I think there was a fairly general “it’s up to us now” sort of feeling.

This collection of people makes up a huge chunk of my best friends in the world. Only my children, including some of my stepchildren, belong in this group of intimate friends and colleagues. It is a truism—trite, of course, but valuable—that you can’t make new old friends. That means you will have to make do with the old friends you have now. The same is true for family. These guys, in whose company I spilled milk and Cheerios on the tablecloth, are the family with which I must now “make do.” I am extraordinarily fortunate.

I didn’t grow up with these wonderful women, of course, at least not in the same sense I grew up with my brothers. On the other hand, I was still in my teens when Karl (just to my left in the picture) brought Betty home to meet our folks.[1] I was in my twenties when Mark (immediately to my right in the picture) brought Carol home. I was in my forties when John (to Mark’s right) introduced us to Gina.[2] Anyone who knows who I am now, in my 70s, would have to admit that I have grown up quite a bit in the last thirty years. It’s never too late, I guess.

Brother has a strict genealogical meaning, of course, but it has a lot of extended meanings as well, as “fraternity brother” attests. As a rule, relationship names don’t change all that much over time. The Indo-European root bhrātar produces both the Gothic brother—and the German bruder, which is the linguistic background of our family—and the Greek phratēr. So “brotherhood” and “fraternity” are just forms of the word from the two prominent language traditions underlying English. Of the four of us, all of whom enjoy words, I am the one most attracted by what words used to mean and what they mean now.

Since the “blood brother” meaning of the word is so powerful, you would expect people to develop related expressions that extend it and indeed, the seventh meaning given by the dictionary I am using gives the meanings as “a male fellow member of the same race, church, profession, organization, and so on (including both fraternity brother and soul brother).” We are of the same race, of course, but we are of different “churches,” different professions, different organizations. We are of different temperaments, different ways of seeing the world, different priorities among values that we “share” when they are defined very generally. Our unique histories have given us odd quirks, foibles, hot buttons, tolerances, and strengths. You never know what is going to set one or the other of us off.

But in all that diversity, the tie of being a part of the triumphs and tragedies of each other’s lives for so long has made us family in a very strong way. It is rich, but as you could guess from the reference to tragedies, it is expensive. We have held each other, both metaphorically and physically, as marriages have come unstuck, as children have received frightening diagnoses, as parents have died, as wives have died, and as we have all begun to be just a little less sharp than our memories tell us we were when we were younger.

Being a part of all that hurts. There is no honest way to say that it doesn’t. On the other hand, it is the basis for intimacy and trust. That’s what you buy when you pay those costs generously and with an open heart.

We are all academics and all healers. The brothers on either side of me are medical doctors.[3] They are academics because you have to be academically accomplished if anyone is going to let you practice medicine. They are also academics because they know they need to teach their patients if any long term good is to come out of their practice of medicine. I know stories from the examination rooms of both of my doctor brothers and I know both are teachers as well as doctors.

The other two of us spent the better part of our lives in colleges and universities teaching students about the several kinds of politics (my field) and of biology (John’s field).[4] You can teach in any of several styles, just as you can practice medicine in any of several styles, but I think it is fair to say that John and I practiced as healers. We taught about the healing of natural and social systems and we practiced our craft by working toward the healing of those of our students who came to us to ask for it.

The four of us and the women who continue to share their lives with us will continue to meet as long as there are eight of us to do it. Then, when there are seven. Then six. The last two of us will embrace at our last meeting and if we can still speak, we will say, “Brother.”

[1] All the wives are standing in from of their husbands. The ages of the husbands are in serial order, of course, but the ages of the wives are not.

[2] I was in my sixties when I met Bette, the redhead who is standing in front of me, and I’m not entirely sure I have grown up any at all since meeting her. Things might have started going the other direction, in fact. You’d have to ask her.

[3] Both have retired, but that has not stopped them from being doctors.

[4] That means both of us have spent a good deal of time studying what snakes do, so if there are behavioral herpetologists, two of them are us.

Posted in Living My Life | Tagged brothers, doctors, family, sisters, teachers | 2 Comments

Why We Shut the Government Down

Posted on October 3, 2013 by hessd

Today is the third day of the shutdown of the federal government. This would be the result of a tantrum on the order of “I’m going to hold my breath until I turn blue” if there were only one government body involved. Alas, there are more.

I count five active participants. The “Tea Party caucus” of the House Republican caucus is one.[1] The moderate (non-Tea Party) Republicans in the House comprise the second. Speaker John Boehner is the third. Republican Senators are the fourth. The fifth is President Obama.

The classic tantrum situation is this: “If you don’t [something—I’ll say, “give me Sugar Pops for lunch, just to have an example], I’ll hold my breath until I turn blue.” Today, I want to think about this shutdown using the tantrum model. Then, I’d like to pivot, at the end, to a very telling and well-known story by H. G. Wells in which Speaker Boehner plays the part of Wells.

Since I am a liberal Democrat, I see the Tea Party caucus as the tantrum-throwers. In the late 60s and early 70s, we saw a lot of left wing radicals whose avowed goal was to “bring the Mother down.”[2] Yale political scientist Robert Dahl wrote a book called After the Revolution? in which he laid down this challenge. “OK,” he said, “the revolution has been successful and you are now in control of the government. Now what?” The point he wanted to make, and for which he was widely reviled on the left, was that the revolutionary left had no political program. They just wanted the nasty national government to go away. Presumably, everything would be OK after that happened, as if a cancer had been removed.

The history of the postwar (Vietnam) period and the takeover of the National Democratic Party by centrist Bill Clinton dealt with the power of the hard left over the Democratic Party. Now it’s the Republican Party’s turn. Maybe there’s a rule of some kind that there must always be a certain number of apocalyptic revolutionaries in the country and they are allocated first to one party and then to the other. For whatever reason, the revolutionary right is now the active faction and Robert Dahl’s question comes back to me from time to time. OK, you win. Now what?

It is worth noting that this struggle is not “partisan” in the classic sense. It does not pit the Democratic Party against the Republican Party. The Tea Party activists were fundamentally dissatisfied with the presidency of George W. Bush and they would have been dissatisfied with John McCain and Mitt Romney. They are probably even more dissatisfied with Barack Obama, but at their level of outrage, it is hard to tell a few extra decibels more or less.

The sugar freak toddler in my initial example is actually in a much better place than the Tea Party caucus in the House of Representatives. The harried parent can always say, “OK, I give up. Here are your damn Sugar Pops.” But imagine now that this is not a toddler, but a former toddler. This guy is now thirty years old and his implacable wrath against his parents is based on their often withholding Sugar Pops from him when he was a child. What, exactly, do the parents do about a not-so-young man who is angry about how little sugar was available to him when he was a child?

I think the dilemma of the Tea Party caucus is more like that. They are angry about the Affordable Care Act.[3] They are angry that majorities in both houses of Congress passed it. They are angry that the President proposed it and that when it was passed, that he signed it. They are angry that the Supreme Court declared it to be (mostly) constitutional although Chief Justice John Roberts did wiggle a little about what was a “fee” and what was a “tax.”[4] They are angry that the state exchanges necessary to provide the promised benefits are being set up by the states nearly everywhere and that the federal government is setting them up in states that won’t.

The tool they have for expressing all this anger is passing the U. S. Budget (or not) and raising the debt ceiling (or not). And since this is the tool they have, they are using it. The people who are in the way of their using it are in the path of an angry elephant and that is not a good place to be.

The Republicans in the House who are not part of the tantrum are natural Tea Party opponents. I’m not really sure how they are being kept quiet, but the possible reasons include opposition in their next party primary by a well-funded and angry Tea Party candidate. These Republicans are watching their party being destroyed, but to do anything about it, they would have to step out in front of the elephant and mostly, they have chosen not to do that.

It is worse, in a way, for the Republicans in the Senate, including Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and recent Republican nominee for President John McCain. You would think they would be listened to because they are Republicans, but they aren’t Tea Party Republicans, so they are part of Them and not part of Us.

It is probably worst for House Speaker John Boehner who must not only endure the tantrum being pitched by these forty or so members of his conference, but who must also, on occasion, make their pitch for them. This is a script that does nothing for him at all. It doesn’t get the party out of the corner into which they have painted themselves. It doesn’t empower him to sit at the grownup’s table and help craft a larger longer term budget strategy in which some very important Republican goals could be met. Nope. He, too, is one of those who denied the toddler his Sugar Pops when that toddler was small.

President Obama is certainly the most reviled by the Tea Party Caucus, but he might actually benefit from the Republican divisions. If business leaders in red states conclude that they have to choose between Democrats and a stable predictable business environment and Republicans who are still throwing a tantrum, large numbers of them are going to become Democrats until the Republican Party restores a little discipline. That would be a HUGE change in American politics, although it would probably be a short term change. When the party restores order to its ranks, the business leaders will revert to their natural alliance with low tax free market Republicans.

Why is John Boehner doing this? As I thought about it, I remembered a memoir called “Shooting an Elephant,” by George Orwell. The story begins with this line: “In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.”

An elephant has killed one of the villagers and they call for Wells. Orwell sends an assistant to get him an elephant rifle, but when he approached the elephant, he saw that nothing would be gained by killing him. Then he turned around and realized that the whole village had come out to witness the spectacle of the white man with the gun killing the elephant. Here is the way Orwell describes his dilemma.

And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle.

Orwell shot and killed the elephant. If you just substitute “Speaker” for Sahib and “Tea Party Caucus” for “natives,” I think you will see why John Boehner can’t find a way to respond. If you are wondering what I think about it, I will give you the last sentence of Orwell’s memoir as my answer.

“I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.”

[1] The Republicans call their organizations “conferences,” I know, but no one seems to be talking about a Tea Party Conference, and you can see why.

[2] “Mother…” was widely understood to be an aphetic form of a longer and much more vulgar word.

[3] You don’t have to call it the Affordable Care Act if you don’t want to. I call it P-Pac, myself, because I want to emphasize the “patient protection” part of the act’s name. Or you could introduce a bill to deal with this Act, as Republicans did in the 112^th Congress, when they put up HR 2, Repealing the Job-Killing Health Care Law Act. That’s true. Really. You can look it up at www.thomas.gov if you like.

[4] He also wiggled on the question of whether commercial activity can be required, or whether it can only be regulated when it occurs.

Posted in Politics | Tagged affordable care act, government shutdown, President Obama, speaker boehner, tantrums, tea party caucus | Leave a comment