Best of the Fray
Intelligent posts rescued from oblivion.
Has our justice system just become comic relief ? Are we as a nation so deprived or perhaps depraved with respect to entertainment, that the alleged wrongdoing by someone who is so obviously out of touch with himself and the reality of the world merits the airtime and ink it will inevitably get ?
I certainly hope not. We as a nation have far more important things to concern ourselves with than Michael Jackson's traveling salvation show. The absolute best thing that could happen for this trial is that it be moved to an island somewhere and everyone except the trial participants are banned from being there. Where lawyers wouldn't have cameras to pander to and the defendant would have to behave as a normal human being does.
What about the "peoples' right to know" you ask. Well let them know, after the trial is over. Maybe by that time, their collective common sense will have returned to a point where they can understand the difference between the real world and fantasyland.
Thats the problem today. Too many people live their lives vicarously through others, mostly celebrites. Maybe if these people were not aggrandized beyond thier human net worth, the rest of the few of us who remain sane in the midst of this nonsense would not be subjected to it.
gtompkins1 on the ethics of elective medicine and … erections, based on Saletan's Viagra/Medicare newsbrief:
A procedure is elective, as opposed to emergent or urgent, if the disease process to be corrected does not require immediate surgical intervention, but instead allows the surgery to take place at some selected, convenient, time in the future.
The author seems to be groping for the distinction between medical interventions which are required by an underlying disease process, and non-medical conditions that might be improved by some medical intervention. Looked at more clearly, I think that there is a clear distinction, no more blurred than before. A disease leaves the patient in an abnormal state of deficiency or decrement, that lies below the level of function associated with a disease-free state. The non-medical conditions for which some demand for medical interventions might arise, in contrast, have the "patient" starting at a normal level, and desiring some enhancement that supposedly improves on nature. In some cases there is a continuum, that leaves a grey area, but such cases only illustrate the soundness of the principle. Being 25 lbs overweight, for example, does not make one a legitimate candidate for stomach-stapling…
Should medical interventions for non-medical conditions be banned? If the risks, and other costs, of the interventions exceed the benefits, yes. This consideration clears the field of most such interventions, because an intervention would not be "medical", restricted to the direction of medical providers, unless it were risky…
Finally, the idea that you are going to improve on nature by tweaking some aspect of your physiology up beyond normal is generally a non-starter. Were you happier as a 19 year-old? In the unlikely event that you were happier, was it because of your erectile prowess? (Ladies, you'll just have to do a thought experiment, and transfer this question to consideration of the men you've known.) Really? Why do you think that having erectile performance more like a 19 year old than what is natural for the 49 year old that you are, will in any way make you happier?
The_Bell on the history of secularism in France, in response to Elisabeth Eaves's documentation of religious revivalism in the Parisian suburbs:
The possibility of an evangelical-style religious revival in France and its encroachment on that country's century-old strict segregation between Church and State made me reflect that it might provide a more detached observation of an controversial and polarizing issue in our own nation by removing it from its more familiar environs. Moreover, I thought it might be useful to frame the issue using the words of the great French thinkers within the long period cited by Ms. Eaves whose intellectual precepts helped lead to the rise of secularism in France and the 1905 law…
French insistence on the lack of religion in all things public became a crucial feature in the French ideal of citizenship. The French Republic has always recognized individuals rather than groups and holds that its citizens' first allegiance is to the State. This is not so different from most other democratic governments, including our own. But the French took it a step further, insisting that citizens have no officially sanctioned ethnic or religious identity and encouraging them to abandon both to the greatest extent possible.
Such a viewpoint is arguably non-discriminatory or, more precisely, equi-discriminatory. Yet societal stress on forced homogeneity, coupled with the exclusion of religious symbols and practices from all public places and discourse, led to feelings of oppression by people of faith within France and eventually rebellion on their part. Any study of history must admit the postulate that movements born out of feelings of repression and rebellion tend to be more extreme and militant in nature. Hence the more recent rise and prominence of non-mainstream (in the West) religions like fundamental Islam, Jehovah Witnesses, and the Evangelical Assembly of the Pentecost within France.
As Eaves article suggests, many of these religions were first brought to France by immigrants, primarily from Northern Africa. Lest some would counter-argue that these growing religions carry seeds of extremism and militancy within them that are (unhappily) transforming the secularism of France, it is interesting to note that most first generation immigrants embraced the more open society that French secularism provided and protected. It is their children and grand children who have adopted their religions' more conservative practices. Especially when living in disadvantaged areas, religious symbols and practices are a way of creating a group identity in rebellion against France's homogeneity...
Publius's criticism of Shafer's comparison of W. to Kim Jong-Il:
I'm not about to explain or defend every one of the Bush Administration's approaches to dealing with the press, but it should suffice to say that (1) there is not "press" in North Korea; if a self-styled "reporter" were to write something about Kim alog te lines of this citique of Bush, he would have nowhere -- nowhere -- to publish it without sending it abroad and, if he did that, he'd wind up dead or, at least, in prison.
Some of what Shaffer describes is fairly routine stuff in the endless hide and seek played out by reporters and politicians (e.g., putting the LAT in te basement of GOP priorities); some is a function of legitimate sensitivity to national security needs, while some is an unfortunate but inevitable stretching of the national security blanket to cover more than it should, and bureaucrats and non-political professionals in government are more prone to do this than top poltical officials; and some is the result of the virtually open hostility to all things Bush all-too-frequently shown by a large segment of the media for four years (e.g., few press conferences).
It may well be that Bush would do better to follow the Baker-Reagan path of intensive cultivation, but if he doesn't and that's bad for him politically, it doesn;t mean he's chosen to undermine the republic.
Shaffer shares in full measure the "fourth estate" conceit that reporters somehow hold a special place and responsibilty under the Constitution, so that the unwillingness, say, to hold more news conferences or give Shaffer and the LAT interviews is on a par with proroguing Congress. Sorry, Shaffer, but the only special rights you have are the same as those I have -- to write and publish what I please.
The suggestion that there is any resemblance whatsoever between the US and North Korea in 2005 is an outrageous slander and marks Shaffer as a nut or a fool.
Followed by FritzGerlich's rebuttal here:
I suggest you refresh your memory about the avalanche of "solid intelligence" assurances given in early 2003 about the "immediate, imminent threat" Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction" posed to "the safety of America." Remember the numerous invocations of "yellowcake purchases" and "mushroom clouds"?
Shafer has a serious point: what is happening is not politics as usual. Yes, all American politicians have used media to portray themselves and their ideas in the best light and their opponents otherwise. And previous administrations have had their covert actions, and lied about them. But that stuff has never before amounted to a whole program of orchestrated stonewalling, lying, bribery, media intimidation, and public scare tactics. This administration, commanding a phalanx of governmental and non-governmental operatives, is practicing these things to a degree, and with an effectiveness, I have not seen in my lifetime. I realize this comparison will evoke another screech from you, but the best parallels I can think of occurred in quasi-democratic countries falling partially or completely under fascist rule: Mussolini's Italy, the end of the Weimar Republic and Hitler's consolidation of power through plebiscites, Peron's Argentina, Pinochet's Chile.
Your predictable take on current events is that anybody who knows history and isn't naive would see that this is all just business as usual; anybody who is alarmed about the Bush administration is just chicken-littling. For a long time I tried to keep a similar perspective myself. I was very skeptical about Bush personally, but perfectly willing at first to see him as within the general post-World War II presidential tradition, even if on the side of that tradition I don't favor. Until the massive intellectual dishonesty he and his people displayed whilst engineering their invasion of Iraq. At that point, I realized that what I was witnessing was the politics of bad faith, the willingness to say or do anything, to rationalize a predetermined objective. Is that your idea of how America has been governed? Should be governed?
