Against Ayn Rand, Vol. 4: Atheism, Materialism, Determinism, and Society

Society has long been a topic of discussion among the intelligentsia of all civilizations. It has different meanings for some cultures than for others, and its meaning is frequently hotly contested by people of different ideological persuasions. The meaning of society is essential because in democratic countries, the expectation is that the government act in the best interest of that society. And in order to define what is in the best interests of the society, there must be an understanding of what is meant by the term society.

In "The Objectivist Ethics," Ayn Rand makes passing reference to her vision of society. Tucked away in an appositive, which special attention is required to notice, Rand notes that "society is only a number of individual men." While Rand is right to point out that society is the product of men (we'll assume she's referring to all human beings), she has missed the other half of the equation entirely. Society and individual human beings are mutually constituted. Humans make up society, and society creates individuals.

It's especially strange that Rand should overlook so completely an idea such as social constructivism, given her rejection of all mysticism and the supernatural. If individuals are not the product of God or some other supernatural power, and they are not the product of their society, there seems to be no other argument but that the individual produces herself. This is, of course, impossible, and even the most serious individualists of the 19th century such as Emerson and Thoreau would not have made such an argument. It is impossible to be uninfluenced, unaltered, and entirely independent of society, even in the practice of becoming a hermit. In fact, one would be influenced by society to reject it in that instance.

But perhaps I am being disingenuous. Perhaps Rand is not arguing that we are uninfluenced, but is instead arguing that society is a non-entity, that we are only influenced by other individuals. Even this idea, however, seems to place too much emphasis on individuals. Societal norms come into and go out of fashion. Whereas today democracy is seen as a good tool of political organization, at the time of the Constitutional Convention, most American leaders felt that the American people could not be trusted with democracy. Michel Foucault, in his wonderful work Discipline and Punish, has described how norms of punishment have changed from the punishing of the body to the punishing of the soul. To say that society values something is not to say that a majority of individuals in a particular community believe something, but rather that a particular value is important to the coexistence of the members of that community.

This is where the idea of intersubjectivity must make its appearance. Rand neglects entirely the notion that there is anything beyond the physical, material, chemical/biological world. This, of course, leads her to a militant atheism. But while some would see this type of materialism and atheism as necessary corollaries and use such an argument to condemn atheists, atheism is much broader term than her narrow interpretation here. In fact, many atheists (and theists) in the social sciences, argue for the idea of intersubjectivity - that inherent in the interaction between two or more individuals there emerges something that is the union of subjectivity and objectivity. In a spiritual humanist (and perhaps atheist) sense, this might manifest itself as the electric chain of humanity.

But returning to Rand, supposing her strict atheist, materialist vision of the world were accurate, the world would be determined. There seems to alternative. If the world is entirely physical, then our perception of acting of our own volition would be illusory; we would only be acting of what we thought was our own volition but was instead a series of neural connections predetermined to respond in a certain way to our present situation. And if this were the case, then the entire goal of creating a society in which people have the maximum amount of freedom would instead be the goal of creating illusory freedom, the mere perception of freedom. Being an atheistic pragmatist and not entirely sure of the answer to the materialist question myself, I could be persuaded that the illusion of freedom is worth fighting for, but to Rand who is so dedicated to the pursuit of the objective truth, the idea that so many people could live under the false pretense of free will would seem to be a deal-breaker.

How can Rand advocate that objective truth achieved through the use of reason and one's own self interest be the goal on the one hand, when the pursuit of objective truth, the degree to which it is pursued, and the veracity of the ideas obtained are predetermined for the individual in the first place, especially when the individual doing the pursuing believes himself to be acting of his own volition? It makes no sense.

I am not the first to criticize Rand on these metaphysical grounds, nor, I'm sure will I be the last. Rand's metaphysics is weak at best, and I am not well-enough versed to bring it down on its head entirely, but this should be a good start. In a following post, I will tackle the fallacy of pure objectivity.

The Anti-Tea Party Call for Political Reform

If you believe the rhetoric of politicians, journalists, pundits, and evangelicals, the United States is on the brink of total ruin. A rising China threatens our global hegemony both economically and militarily. Even with the fragility of the European Union called into question the US dollar is still weak against the Euro. While the US is mired in two wars and three interventions from Libya to Pakistan, China is investing heavily in African resources and advanced technology. North Korea may have nuclear weapons. A war to crack down on drugs headed to America has left 40,000 dead in Mexico. And the economy still hasn't come back to full throttle after the economic collapse of 2008. All the while, those people we expect to lead us away from the disaster on our doorstep are mired in tribal bickering that makes monkeys throwing excrement at each other look like the nuanced dialogue of an advanced civilization.

How can we avoid descending into the type of tribalism to which we so often resort - think about the assassination of Osama bin Laden or the Gulf of Mexico oil spill. These are not times to fling poo at our rivals. These are times to lead - to start the difficult discussions the country needs to have and to make the tough decisions the country needs to make. But when we are engaged in a two-sided war, competing for the power to wield the power, the political game is the only game that matters.

The frustration at seeing our politicians, our leaders, our representatives, descend into such petty mud-wrestling is what has fueled the vitriolic anger of the Tea Party movement. In fact, the Tea Party is so popular because even people who do not agree with their policy proposals associate with the movement because it so accurately expresses their anger with the established politics of the country. Many people have extraordinarily little faith in the government, and there are no other political alternatives.

But the Tea Party is reactionary. While it rightly becomes exasperated with Washington, its solution is to drastically cut the power that resides there. And while it might be appropriate to laud Tea Partiers for their commitment to the cause of governmental reform, a haphazard slashing of power so that politicians can make less of a mess of it is far from the type of considered, calculated, reasoned, rational response the country needs.

Mickey Edwards, a former congressman from Oklahoma, laid out a six-step plan to fix Congress. It hits at some of the issues of partisanship, to be sure, but it doesn't get at the underlying problem of tribalism in our society. Edwards offers a handful of solutions, but fails to put forward anything resembling comprehensive reform. And we are at a time when comprehensive reform is the only solution. Unfortunately, none exists.

But what if there were? What we need instead of slow changes to a comprehensively broken system there existed a committee of former politicians to tackle all of the issues of governmental reform. It could be lead by one Republican and on Democrat but would have the goal of doing away with all of the incentives towards two-party stagnation. Perhaps two former presidents would do the trick. Clinton and one of the Bushes? And the committee would necessarily have to comprise former members of all branches of government. And while it might be easy to find former congressmen, such a task for the judiciary might be more difficult. The committee could then look to scholars and academics, who should be incorporated across the branches anyway.

It is a bold solution, and it would be a bold move for any politician or ex-politician to support such a movement. But if such a movement does not gain traction sometime soon, either the Tea Party will do away with most of the benefits we now derive from the government altogether or we will continue in the same political gridlock that has brought us this close to the cliff. I don't know how long we can continue in this political inertia that draws us ever nearer to the precipice, but I don't think anyone wants to find out.

Against Ayn Rand, Vol. 3: Introversion, Shyness, and the Transmission and Production of Knowledge and Information

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the problem of non-competitive (cooperative) people in a competitive society (capitalist system). The post was speculative and did not provide any concrete thoughts on how this might manifest itself. There was, however, a fascinating piece that came out in the Sunday Review section of the NY Times about shyness and introversion that seems directly related to the previous discussion.

Susan Cain posits that shyness could actually be naturally selected for, an evolutionary advantage so to speak, but only when balanced by a greater natural selection for extroversion. Cain's argument is that the over-prescription of drugs to treat social anxiety disorder could be a detriment to the advancement of the human species. Because introverts provide a different style of leadership, and are often at the vanguard of art and science, it's necessary that society not exclude them systematically, whether that system be natural or prescribed.

Unfortunately, writes Cain, "Shyness and introversion share an undervalued status in a world that prizes extroversion... As a society, we prefer action to contemplation, risk-taking to heed-taking, certainty to doubt. Studies show that we rank fast and frequent talkers as more competent, likable, and even smarter than slow ones."

Such research is not new. Over eight years ago now, Jonathan Rauch published a piece on introversion in the Atlantic Monthly. The piece read as a coming out: "My name is Jonathan, and I am an introvert." Rauch had much the same thing to say about introverts' role in the world. "Introverts may be common, but they are also among the most misunderstood and aggrieved groups in America, possibly the world."

Yet in spite of the misperceptions about introverts, they possess above average intelligence, and are often good at a different set of skills than extroverts. Nevertheless society deems them, all other things being equal, to be not quite as good as their extroverted counterparts.

In a competitive environment in which one has to compete against others for attention, introverts are at even more of a disadvantage. They feel awkward in social groups, and are exhausted by being around other people. And introverts are clearly underrepresented in politics because of the generally outgoing nature required for a political campaign. In essence, in all public life, where sociality and extroversion are advantages, introverts are marginalized.

So what would Ayn Rand say. It is my guess that, given introverts' advantages in some capacities and generally higher than average intelligence, Rand would suggest that the public sphere is misguided for not rewarding introversion more. In fact, employers who don't value introversion are unnecessarily harming themselves by failing to devise a system that takes such a character trait into account. And she would not be wrong.

But there's a flip side to Rand's answer that is unaccounted for in her writing. What if you don't know what you don't know - the infamous unknown unknowns of Donald Rumsfeld. What if society has no idea that it is systematically oppressing a minority of people? What if society doesn't know that by altering its norms and increasing its understanding about an issue it has never thought about, it could produce better, more efficient results? What if we live in a constant state of societal anosognosia?

Even if one person, say Susan Cain or Jonathan Rauch, were to uncover the truth - that it would be better for society to account for its current norms that disadvantage introverts - it would be advantageous to such people to keep that information secret. And it is in this area - the transmission and production of knowledge and information - that Rand's philosophy breaks down. Rand argues that society is at its most efficient when each pursues her individual interests, but here we have a case where this is simply false. By pursuing one's own interests in matters of information, one can actually disadvantage society as a whole.

Again, I have not attempted to attack Rand's philosophy head on here. That will come. But I did want to highlight these articles about introversion and shyness. They are wonderful. If you like the article by Rauch, there is a follow-up here and an interview with him here.

Against Ayn Rand, Vol. 2: European Freedom

Two articles today about Europe merit further consideration, especially in the context of Randian thought. The first describes a Swedish preschool that is attempting to avoid instilling in its students any sets of gender norms. The second discusses European cities' increasingly anti-car urban planning. Both scenarios present something of an attack to Randian values of freedom. While the freedom expressed in each is not precisely European, and the use of such a term is an overgeneralization, it is clear that a different type of freedom is at play in these two examples than is at play in the writings of Ayn Rand.

At the Swedish preschool, instructors use a nascent word borne from feminist circles that is a gender-neutral pronoun when they prefer to visitors to the class, such as plumbers, nurses, mechanics, firefighters, etc. when they don't know the gender of that person. They also use children's stories that describe families with single parents, gay or lesbian parents, three or four parents, and other unorthodox family structures. The idea is to make everyone comfortable with the idea that different family structures aren't necessarily bad family structures, and that different gender roles aren't necessarily bad gender roles.

The criticism, while well-intentioned, is oftentimes misguided. One Swedish woman suggests that "Different gender roles aren't problematic as long as they are equally valued." One can't help but be reminded of the famous US Supreme Court case Brown v. Board of Education in which the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that separate is inherently unequal.

Another criticism came from an American child psychologist quoted in the story, who argues that "Gender neutrality at its worst is emasculating maleness." His jumbled lexicon makes his meaning somewhat unclear, but he would be wrong to suggest that it will be bad for men to like masculine things. Boys aren't taught that it is wrong to play sports. Rather, they are taught that it is not wrong to like to cook or sew or wear pink.

The dismantling of gender norms is not designed to be constricting; in fact, it's designed to be liberating. There is that which we call masculine and that which we call feminine. Whether one is male-bodied or female-bodied should have no bearing on that person's choice of how masculine and how feminine to be because the association of certain behavioral norms with certain genitalia is nothing more than a constricting social construction.

The other story pertaining to European freedom focused on city planning in many cities that is making it more difficult to use cars. Trolleys are given the power to change traffic lights, parking spaces are being removed, low-emissions zones are being implemented, bike lanes and pedestrianized zones are becoming more common, and some cities have even instituted fees to take a car into the very center of the city. All of this amounts to a substantial incentive to find others means of transportation.

The reasons are many. The environmental benefit is among the most touted, and it is likely the most substantial. But there will also be a personal health benefit as more people walk or take a bicycle. Getting more people to use public transportation is good for cities as well because it brings people from different walks of life in contact with on another, thereby creating a more coherent idea of community in the city's citizenry.

In both of these scenarios, the Swedish preschool and the driving restrictions, the goal is a certain type of freedom. While the Randian will argue that freedom is only freedom from coercion, the European city planners and Swedish preschool instructors would argue that freedom is having the best of all possible knowledge to choose from amongst the many different options some of which you might of thought did not exist previously.

This is quite easy to see in the Swedish preschool. If little boys don't know that it is acceptable for them to wear a dress or like to cook, and if little girls do not know that it is acceptable for them to pretend to be knights or like to play sports, they are not free to make rational choices regarding these opportunities. Gender norms are constricting for both men and women in this regard, and their abolishment leads to a freer society.

The example of encouraging public and non-motorized transportation in European cities is designed to help people realize the true cost of private motorized transportation. There is both an environmental and a social cost that is not factored into the use of one's private vehicle. By implementing fees and making it more difficult to drive in city centers, local governments have helped their residents experience these costs. In essence, they fill out what had gone unnoticed about the imbalance of the driving equation: social and environmental costs. When people experience these costs through different means, their cost-benefit analysis of the choice of transportation changes. More information frees them to make better choices.

In both articles, then, we see how Rand's conception of freedom is far from comprehensive. When people do not correctly experience costs and benefits, when people do not know the choices that are available to them, they are not free. Both exercises, non-normative gender education and disincentivized transportation by car, result in a freer populace.

Mexico 4 - 2 USA

I don't really have all that much to say about the match. The US scored two goals against the run of play in the first half which were erased by halftime. And although Dempsey hit the crossbar and Bradley had a volley go just wide, the US was just not as good as Mexico.

I could grip a little about the referee. Donovan's yellow card was a foul about 1/3 as bad as a dozen fouls committed by Mexico, and one Mexican player appeared to intentionally kick Freddy Adu in the face, but everyone prefers to see the teams judged on their merits. And it would have taken an extraordinary amount of assistance from the referee to have gotten the US to a point where this appeared to be the case.

So instead of talking about the game, I'm going to talk about the commentary by JP Dellacamera and Kyle Martino on the Fox Soccer Channel. I had found the English-language commentary so awful earlier in the tournament that for several games, I went back and forth to Univisión to watch in Spanish. Of course, the problem with Univisión is that it's Mexican, so they have a natural bias against the US. For the other matches, the bias wasn't too bad because they seemed to want to see a US-Mexico final anyway, but tonight was unbearable, so I returned to the dulcet tones Dellacamera and Martino.

Grievance 1, Dellacamera states the obvious. During the first half of the first knock-out stage game, against Jamaica, Dellacamera mentioned no less than 3 times that should the US lose, they would be out of the tournament. Thanks, JP, I didn't know that. Tonight he expounded on the fact that having a two goal lead gives a team more of an advantage than having a one goal lead. Now his job is to provide the commentary, so he was attempting to go into different areas of the game, which he shouldn't normally, but it was almost understandable in this instance because the color commentary and analysis from Martino was so bad.

Grievance 2, Martino doesn't know how to refer to his own country. The United States requires an article before its use. One cannot say "United States have the ball," nor can one say, "It's been a good run of play for United States." No. Instead, the article "the" is required. "The United States have the ball." "It's been a good run of play for the United States." Basic English grammar should be a requirement for anyone whose job description involves communicating.

Grievance 3, Martino's idiocy and narcissism. In the first half, after the United States scored the second goal, Martino suggested that the Mexican fans who dominated the stadium (I'll get back to that) wouldn't be singing any more "Olé's." The game was less than a half-hour in. It's impossible to suggest that the game is over after thirty minutes. What on earth was he thinking. But his attempt to compensate for the error was even worse. When, during the closing minutes, the Mexicans passed the ball around the field to a renewed chorus of "Olé's," Martino intimated that they were doing so simply because he had said it wouldn't happen. The world doesn't revolve around you, Kyle.

Grievance 4, the constant segments with Brian Dunseth down on the field. I don't know why they ever cut to him in the first place given that half the time the technology to do so doesn't work anyway. On the Univisión broadcast by comparison, they cut to Hugo Sanchez in Cancún for analysis without any problems. Of course, the bigger difference between Hugo Sanchez and Brian Dunseth is that Sanchez actually knows something about soccer. Dunseth frequently doesn't even know a bit of information about what's going on in the game he's watching when they can actually cut to him anyway.

Grievance 5, the utter lack of passion. All three of Dellacamera, Martino, and Dunseth seem to have attended the Lobotomized Patients' Academy for Learned Vapidity. It is the only possible explanation for how they can be so unenthusiastic when the Americans score. Even if you find the elongated "Goooooooooooool" from the Mexican commentators to be a bit much, English announcers get excited when the English national team scores. Spanish commentators get excited when the Spanish national team scores. Why can't American commentators get excited when the US national team scores.

Grievance 6, lack of vocabulary. The only time anyone got excited tonight was when Dos Santos scored a remarkable chip shot to kill the game off. Martino got out a couple of "ridiculous"es, but that was it. It wasn't masterful, artful, exquisite, technically brilliant, sublime, majestic, other-worldly, deft, beautiful, or stunning. It was "ridiculous"... multiple times.

Grievance 7, the Rose Bowl? Pasadena? Really? From the time the game started, the Mexicans had the momentum in part because the crowd was solidly behind them. Given that the game took place in southern California, this isn't really all that surprising. BUT WHY ON EARTH WAS THE GAME BEING PLAYED IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA? The US Soccer Federation has to expect that the final is going to be between the US and Mexico, so for the love of God schedule the game someplace where there are fewer Mexican-Americans. Seattle would be one option. Washington, D.C. would be another. Columbus, Ohio. St. Louis. Foxborough. Even San Francisco. It's a decision made not in the interests of the team, but in the financial well-being of the organization.

Against Ayn Rand, Vol. 1: Healtchare

Having just concluded reading a pair of essays by Ayn Rand, "The Objectivist Ethics" and "The Nature of Government," I will begin tonight a series of posts that seek to present problems with the thinking of Rand presented in these essays. While at times I confront Rand at her own game, arguing against her from within her own framework, at other times I argue against the framework as a whole. At neither time should the choice to argue from one perspective or the other be an indication that I concede any point articulated by Rand. At times, these posts are designed explicitly to argue against Rand. At other times, such as this one, the post is peripherally related.

At a very simplistic level, the economic theory espoused by Rand is a hard-core libertarianism. Privatize, privatize, privatize is the theory of choice - an extreme laissez-faire capitalism that has complete separation of economics and government. It is my belief that the issue of medical care is enough to persuade many people that such a scenario does not work. Unless you believe that those people who cannot afford medical care should not receive it, it is unlikely that you would consent to Rand's position being superior to one in which the government is involved.

If health insurance were entirely left up to the free market, there would be many people who could not afford to purchase it for themselves. These people would, therefore, be denied coverage. The case of the person who has survived multiple heart attacks is a good example. The preexisting condition of heart instability would mean that the cost of insuring such a person would be quite high. So let's suppose that this person does not have the money to purchase a health insurance plan that will cover him in the event of another heart attack. Well, the chances are that he'll have another heart attack, so let's suppose that he does. He is rushed to the emergency room where doctors are obligated by their code of ethics to help in whatever way they can. The medical bill may well reach six figures, but of course, the man has no insurance because he can't afford it, so there is no way he can pay the medical bill.

There seem to be four options here. 1) The medical field could rewrite its code of ethics so that they are not obligated to help patients who cannot pay. 2) Hospitals raise prices for everything to offset the cost of treating those patients who can't afford it. 3) The government could reimburse the hospital for the emergency cost. 4) The government could ensure that the everyone has health insurance, either by mandating that health insurance providers cover everyone or by running the system itself. If you find option one unpalatable, as I do, then the Randian system is unacceptable. As for the second option, it drives the price of health insurance up even higher, meaning even more people can't afford it. This is, more or less, how the system has worked for some time now, and it has proven to be radically inefficient.

Regardless of which scenario other than the first we are examining, the Randian will argue that it is inherently unfair because it penalizes people who can afford healthcare because others cannot. So the question we should be asking is not about whether or not the government should be involved in healthcare. Such a question is aesthetic not economical; it is based on preference not on efficiency. Instead we should ask what way of organizing the system is the most efficient. How can we, as a society, pay for the medical care of people who cannot afford it themselves in the most efficient way possible?

Unfortunately, such a discussion is difficult to have. The fire-branding rhetoric of the right will accuse any government intervention in the world of healthcare as being a foray into the experiments of socialized medicine. But the current system is broken. The US ranks below Chile, Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Dominica, Costa Rica, and Cyprus (among many others), in the WHO's ranking of healthcare by country. Nevertheless, the US total expenditure on healthcare per capita is almost double that of all of the other nations of the OECD, and even its public expenditure ranks among the top two or three nations in a system that is almost entirely private.

We must fix our way of providing healthcare for our society. It is inefficient and weighs down business and government. The debate should not be decided by the means to make the system more efficient, but rather by which method makes the system most efficient.

What Happens to Cooperative People in a Competitive Society?

An op-ed by Jorge Castañeda earlier this week in the LA Times made some unusual assertions about Mexico. He argued that, as a people, Mexicans are averse to competition. I have no means whatsoever of assessing the veracity of his claim, and even if I did, I would be reluctant to buy into an idea that's not much more than a national stereotype fueled by speculative anecdotal evidence. But the idea that people can be more or less competitive is an important point to settle on.

We live in a capitalist society, one in which from the earliest of ages we are taught how to compete with others. In school, we compete to see who can be top of the class, and in sports, we compete to see who can be the best athlete. The fact that every kid gets a trophy in under-8 soccer leagues doesn't fool anyone. The kids all know who is better and who is worse, and they all want to be the best.

This competition takes on a more serious flavor by high school where the competition to be the soccer team captain of the trumpet section leader has the added importance of helping one get into college. And in the classroom, students know that no matter how well they do, grades are assigned in relative terms. No teacher will ever give everyone in a class an A. But the stakes only keep getting more severe.

In the workforce, adults are forced to compete for promotions, to see who can make the boss like them the best, and to see who can demonstrate the hardest work ethic. Informally, they compete to have the biggest house, the nicest car, the prettiest yard, the nicest artwork, or the best multimedia system.

But what if you just don't like competing? What if the very idea of competition is off-putting to you? What if you would prefer to engage in cooperation rather than competition. Well, then you're out of luck. Everything in our society is designed in such a way as to benefit those who are competitive rather than those who are cooperative.

In business, the most cutthroat CEO will be rewarded with the highest bonuses. The student who doesn't help others understand the material may well graduate first in his class. Of course, someone may suggest that group projects in both school and the office place are essential parts of the environment and are cooperative. This is not wrong, but doesn't the standout person from the group receive the most benefit from the group's success?

What is needed is some substantial sub-section of society that rewards cooperation over competition, that helps those who disdain competitiveness or find it unpalatable find someplace in society where they are not forced to engage in such competition. There are, of course, communes, but these are extreme examples that are not suited to people who prefer to live in a less competitive environment but are not ready to do so to the fullest extent. Additionally, communes are tarred with pejorative language that attempts to prejudice everyone against the idea that cooperation is a viable alternative to competition.

Because capitalism, which relies primarily on competition, is the economic system of our society, people who prefer not to be competitive are stuck living in a system that works against them. Some discussion must be lent to the idea of alternative means of structuring society that do not abolish capitalism altogether, yet allow for the less competitive to achieve great things.

USA 1 - 0 Panama

It was a solid victory for the USA tonight in what was a tepid affair against a Panamanian side that had beaten them 2-1 in the group stages of the tournament. The Americans got the revenge, however, as Clint Dempsey poked home from a pin-point low cross from Landon Donovan that left four defenders and the keeper helpless.

This game had little of the excitement of the encounter from several days ago, however, as neither time was too concerned with attacking at full speed. Panama were without Blas Perez, after he had been sent off in their penalty-kick victory over El Salvador. The loss of Perez left Tejada isolated up front, and although Quintero was active at times, the Central American side forced Tim Howard to produce his best work only once.

The Americans dominated possession in both halves with Alejandro Bedoya the star of the first. He was all over the field, making good tackles, winning fouls, committing fouls, and making a general nuisance of himself. His energy was excellent and he must have been a nightmare for the fatigued Panamanians. Kljestan, Bradley, and Jones were all solid in the middle of the park, and Agudelo did well up front by himself in the absence of the injured Jozy Altidore.

At the back, Bocanegra looked the stronger of the two center backs, mopping up everything that was thrown into the area. Goodson was not bad, but he didn't put in a stunning display. Eric Lichaj looked severely out of place for the first time in the tournament and one fears he may fare even worse against Mexico in the final, assuming they beat Honduras later tonight.

The goal was produced by two second-half substitutes. Landon Donovan was again left out of the starting eleven but was introduced at halftime for Kljestan. Freddy Adu came on for Agudelo less than 20 minutes later. But after a Panama set piece, the ball popped out to Adu, who hit an amazing ball cross field into the path of Donovan, whose low driving cross to the back post caught out the entire Panama defense and left Dempsey with a sliding tap-in.

From there on out, the Americans easily weathered the Panamanian light rain - it couldn't in good faith be dubbed a storm - and booked their place in the Gold Cup final. The game between Mexico and Honduras will decide which team the US meet in the final on Saturday at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena. Why on earth the US Soccer Federation would have scheduled a final anticipated to be between the US and Mexico since before the tournament in Pasadena, California is beyond me, but the environment will undoubtedly be excellent, at least for the Mexicans.

Jon Huntsman - A Respectable Reasonable Republican?

Since the Democrats came into having possession of both houses of Congress and the presidency in 2008, the country has dive-bombed to the right. While under George W. Bush's leadership, Democrats were left frustrated by both his domestic agenda and his foreign policy, many would most likely now prefer him to many of the Republicans on display in the primary. One exception to this rule might be Jon Huntsman.

While the rest of the Republican party has bolted straight for the right in a quixotic quest for purity of ideology, Huntsman has remained moderate and civil, a stance that Dana Milibank of the Washington Post suggests will doom him to failure. Milibank may be right, but being doomed to failure in this Republican field may leave Huntsman looking positively peachy for 2016.

Huntsman rejects the premise (expressed by many of the candidates at the Republican debate in New Hampshire) that Obama is an American-hating Europhile. Huntsman refuses to support Tea Party candidates just because they win Republican nominations. His family contributed substantial amounts of money to Harry Reid's campaign in Nevada. And he believes in civil unions for homosexual couples as well as human-caused global warming. Add that up and, as Elspeth Reeve of the Atlantic rightly points out, Huntsman is an absolutely anti-Tea Party candidate.

But when the country comes back to its more moderate senses, which is already beginning to happen as negative attitudes towards the Tea Party increase, Huntsman may be the man to restore some semblance of credibility to the Republican party. While most of the party has decided to embrace its right-wing induced LSD trip to the fanatical, Huntsman has managed to avoid the mess by being a continent away as Obama's ambassador to China. And with the Democratic field not looking particularly strong for 2016, Huntsman may well have a chance at the general election.

Of course, he could get excoriated by the crazed right-wing candidates now to the extent that his political career is over. Or his campaign could be such a disaster (misspelling his own name and the state for the press release about his candidacy) that he can't run again in 2016, but if neither of those things happens, Democrats should be concerned because he could be a quite viable candidate for five years down the road.

Well, actually, Democrats should only really be concerned if they are Democrats of the pre-Obama era, when Democrats stood for liberalism, for increasing the social safety net, for higher taxes on the wealthy, and were against hawkish military intervention abroad. But if we're talking about new-fangled Democrats of the Obama variety, they might not have anything to worry about at all. In fact, they just might vote for Huntsman.

No Power for the Little Guy: What the Supreme Court decision in the Wal-Mart class-action suit means for the future of exploitative businesses

The United States Supreme Court ruled today that a group of over 1 million women suing Wal-Mart together on grounds of discrimination based on gender failed to meet the qualifications of a class. The court, of course, did not rule on whether or not the women had in fact been discriminated against but only that they could not reasonably assert status as a class of people.

Justice Scalia, writing for the majority in the 5-4 decision, wrote that the women could not demonstrate that they would all "receive a common answer to the question why was I disvaored." A key part element of this decision was the decentralization of Wal-Mart personnel decisions. Because Wal-Mart's hiring and promotions are left to the discretion of its branch managers, the court determined that the plaintiffs couldn't lay claim to the title of class.

This ruling means that women filing discrimination charges against Wal-Mart must now do so individually, which leaves them with a much lower possibility of ever receiving restitution. Individuals filing claims against big corporations (in this case the world's biggest) are almost always at an enormous financial disadvantage. The chances of finding a lawyer capable of taking on corporate big-wigs is slim. And this is exactly the reason why class-action lawsuits exist in the first place. If these women file individual cases against Wal-Mart the legal fees will rack up at a frenzied pace, one which they cannot afford. By filing a class-action suit, they can pool their resources to fight the same monster that aggrieves them all.

But the damage of this Supreme Court decision goes far beyond its effect on women pursuing class-action lawsuits. As with the Citizens United ruling last year, this decision has drastic implications for the power of the individual in an increasingly corporate-dominated world. When individuals who suffer the same treatment at the hands of a corporation must pursue those claims individually, it becomes nearly impossible for them to receive restitution. The consequence is that corporations will be free to treat their employees however they like so long as it is not deemed systematic.

Of course, it is no surprise that a court with Clarence Thomas on it would against a group of women. The man is among the most high-profile misogynists in the country. His confirmation hearing was mired by multiple allegations of sexual harassment, which he referred to as a "high-tech lynching." At a time when Justice Thomas is already being questioned about his ethical behavior while on the court, it seems an appropriate time to revisit this instance. If Thomas has no respect for women, it would have seemed appropriate for him to recuse himself. Of course, for that to happen, he would have to have a modicum of dignity, which he clearly does not.

So we can add discrimination against women to the laundry list of reprehensible actions and characteristics of Wal-Mart that go unpunished. Driving down the cost of labor in third-world countries where wages are already below the poverty level; preventing Americans living below the poverty level on their wage bills from collecting government benefits; prohibiting their employees from collectively bargaining; failing to provide their employees with adequate healthcare; destroying small business, thereby contributing to the great divergence; having four members of the Walton family in the top-ten wealthiest Americans and refusing to join Bill Gates and Warren Buffett in committing to donate half of their wealth to charitable causes. A despicable enterprise it is indeed.

Jamaica 0 - 2 USA

The US dominated a Jamaica side that looked less like the team that dominated its group in the opening round of the Gold Cup than like the side that hasn't beaten the US in their last 26 meetings. It could have been 1-0 Jamaica inside 5 minutes when a mix-up in the US defense saw Michael Bradley keep everyone onside, but Shelton somehow skewed his shot over from 8 yards with only Howard to beat, and Jamaica wouldn't get another chance anywhere near that good for the rest of the match.

The big headline in the buildup to the game was the exclusion of Landon Donovan from the American starting lineup. Evidently both he and Clint Dempsey had attended their sisters' weddings, and the conditions resulted in only the latter getting a start. Dempsey showed no signs of fatigue from the flights and was very active throughout the first half. He did, however, demonstrate that his impotence in front of goal wasn't wearing off. The truth of the matter was that it seemed Dempsey was just as effective taking free kicks from 30 yards as heading from 3 or 4, after he somehow managed to head into Rickets from inside the six.

Dempsey's ineffectiveness in front of goal was characteristic of the team as a whole. In many respects, the first half against Jamaica looked very similar to the second half against Guadeloupe; the US created tons of chances without being able to find the back of the net.

That changed early in second half after a cross from Eric Lichaj was cleared right to the feet of Jermaine Jones who lashed a thunderous drive which Rickets most likely would have saved had it not been for the intervention of Jermaine Taylor, who diverted the ball into the back of his own net. The goal was credited to Jones, but it was the deflection that took it in.

The two Jermaines would meet again twenty minutes later when Jones burst through the Jamaica back line and Taylor slid in from behind. Jones fell and replays called into question whether or not there was contact. It appeared as if the heel of Jones hit the underside Taylor's leg, but the contact was minimal at most. Mexican referee Marco Rodriguez Moreno had no choice once he blew for a foul; Taylor had to go.

But as the game wore on, Jones may have been questioning his own decision to go down. Jamaica were gradually getting back into the game, and one goal would have forced overtime. Had Jones stayed on his feet, the most likely outcome would have been a goal.

Fortunately for the Americans, the two brothers of newlyweds would leave their mark on the game and put all doubts to rest in the 80th minute. Donovan was in the middle of a lovely one-two with Juan Agudelo, who had come on for the injured Jozy Altidore early in the first half. Agudelo then played in a beautiful cross for an unmarked Dempsey, who still had to dance around Rickets before prodding home. Dempsey washed his face in celebration, hoping to indicate that he had cleansed himself of the drought of goals brought about by nothing more than his own apathy in front of goal.

Throughout the match, Bradley and Jones covered an enormous amount of ground in midfield. Alejandro Bedoya was dangerous on the wings before being replaced by Donovan. Sacha Kljestan and Bradley showed excellent vision. And Clarence Goodson was a rock at the back, with a number of good clearances and tackles. Jones probably takes man of the match for his role in two of the three most important moments, but it was an excellent display overall by the Americans.

The US now await the winner of the Panama - El Salvador match later today. Check back in after the semifinal for a recap of that game as well.

It's Time to Tax Europe: The US has been footing the bill for Europe's defense for too long and Europe knows it

One of my favorite jokes starts like this: "Who has the second largest air force in the world?" Everyone knows the US has the largest air force in the world, but not many people know who has the second-largest. Unsurprisingly, China, the UK, Russia, and Israel are the most guessed countries. The right answer, though, is actually the US. I can almost hear your muttered confusion, "but didn't he say the US has the biggest air force in the world?" Yes, I did. The second largest air force in the world belongs to the US Navy.

A little research demonstrates that, while true, this statistic is actually misleading, since the planes (by which such an assertion is measured) aren't divided by division of the US military. Nevertheless, such an anecdote offers a valuable allegory about our stratospheric levels of defense spending. Statistics which are assuredly NOT misleading (which is why I'll provide a link to them here) show that US spends more on national defense than China, Russia, France, the UK, and the next ten countries on the list combined... with plenty of room to spare.

In terms of the world's total military expenditures, the United States constitutes an intimidating 43%. But the undeniable truth is that while all of this money comes from American taxpayers, much of it goes into defending people who contribute absolutely nothing, or if not nothing, then far less than their fair share. Am I suggesting that democratic dreamers in Afghanistan reimburse the US for ousting the Taliban? No. But since the end of World War II and the establishment of NATO, the US has borne the brunt of the cost of military endeavors in the interest of all, or almost all of western Europe.

In the light of the recent global economic slowdown, as issues of who pays are becoming more important, NATO's involvement in Libya serves as a perfect example of just how these budget crises are going to influence matters of international military intervention. Libya is place that nobody in the US wants to be involved right now. The left is habitually wary of American military intervention and the right is upset about increases to the budget deficit.

Despite neither the left nor the right really wanting to be there, we're launching hundreds if not thousands of cruise missiles into the country in an attempt to support a "rag-tag" gang of Libyan rebels who had less than a snowball's chance in hell of beating Qaddafi's forces without western military intervention and now have something approaching a snowball's chance in hell of beating Qaddafi's forces without European or American troops on the ground. It's a war that can't be won unless Qaddafi is killed, and even if he is, the resistance to the new government would be formidable.

Even our justifications for being there are lackluster at best. Qaddafi is undeniably an oppressive ruler, but the justification of and explicit mandate for the NATO mission there is the protection of Libyan civilians. Evidently Libyan civilians are more important than Ivorian civilians, many of whom were lost when Laurent Gbagbo refused to cede power after losing to Alassane Outtara in national elections. Libya civilians are, presumably, more important than Congolese civilians, of whom over 5 million have been killed in the last 15 years. Of course, it seems ironic and hypocritical at best that as the US funds the mission to protect civilians in Libya it has ordered the assassination of one of its own. I want to know if Qaddafi will intervene to protect the US from killing Anwar al-Awlaki.

The real reason that the US is involved with Libya is because our European allies were growing mighty uncomfortable with the idea of prolonged conflict in North Africa and were unable to deal with it themselves. The futility of the situation in Libya is the real demonstration of how close the system is to its breaking point. The US has long been the one spending the money to fund the defense of our allies in western Europe, and during the Cold War, this paid valuable dividends. But with the Sovient Union gone, and an amorphous international network of terror our new boggart-like enemy, protecting our allies in Europe is dropping rapidly from our list of international priorities. The fact that we're in Libya at all is a testament to the fact that it is still there, but the question is how long it will last.

The Europeans now need American protection more than the US needs to give it, and as the US reaps fewer rewards from its continued investment in European defense, Europeans are going to be asked to foot more of the bill. My half-joking, half-serious, light-hearted, and not-remotely-thought-through proposal is that the US tax Europe for its defense. Blowing up terror cells in Yemen or Pakistan is just as much a benefit to the Europeans as it is the Americans, so why not ask them to contribute to the cause. The terror attacks in London and Madrid are the types of things the US is working to prevent with the war in Afghanistan, yet as of two years ago, the US supplied two-thirds of the troops in Afghanistan.

The sad truth is that the reality of the situation is that the US simply cannot afford to be the world's policeman. International intervention is too costly to be politically viable in the US except in the most extreme of circumstances (i.e., following September 11th). The alternative for Europe looks bad. Counting on the benevolence of the American taxpayer is a strategy that has run its course. Europe either needs to invest in its own defense with the US or without it, but continuing non-investment will surely have deadly consequences.

Asking the Right Questions: The Role of the Humanities

How many times have you heard someone say "There's no such thing as a dumb question."? I'd venture to guess it's far too many. Actually, I know it's far too many because if you've heard that phrase even once, you've heard it more times than its absolute lack of veracity warrants. The idea that all inquiry is good is a myth that plagues our society.

For example, the sociologist who asks about the average SAT scores of people from different races. The answer to such a question is useless. Consider the other relevant questions that could be asked: we could assess childhood malnutrition and childhood healthcare by race and how it influences brain development. We could examine the distribution of race in the best schools around the country. We could examine the the rates at which students of different races consume the services of private tutors. While the first question leaves you with a simple answer that SAT scores of Whites and Asians are higher than those of Blacks and Latinos, the answer to any of the subsequent questions demonstrates the racism inherent in our society - that certain groups of people are systematically denied access to the same goods and services of others.

In a society that is inherently unequally raced, asking a question about race that fails to take into account the factors that produce the answer is not merely idiotic, it is dangerous. It leads us into a minefield of half-truths (or non-truths) and assumptions out of which it is impossible to extricate ourselves. A society as complex as our own commands answers worthy of such complexity. To make certain that we ask the right questions to get these necessarily complex answers, there must be some safeguard to ensure that we do not ask the wrong questions. That safeguard is the humanities.

Much has been made over the past few decades of the benefits of interdisciplinarity. The great benefit of the liberal arts, of course, is that one learns across a multiplicity of disciplines. The combination of the enterprises of the different disciplines is, I believe the goal. Yet too often the definition of interdisciplinarity is too narrow, particularly when talk about broad interdisciplinarity (the sciences and the humanities, for example). Ted Toadvine has pointed out six such myths of broad interdisciplinary study in Volume 1 of Thinking Nature.

Toadvine's brief article merits a full reading, for his conclusions are prescient and insightful. He argues that great interdisciplinary work doesn't come from having a poet and chemist study electrons or having a physicist and a painter produce a painting. Rather, the best interdisciplinary work comes when the different disciplines work together to perform the tasks to which they are best suited. And the scientific task to which the humanities are best suited is to help scientists ask the right questions.

As Toadvine rightly points out, "If our typical way of framing environmental problems privileges the kinds of 'solutions' that empirical approaches will provide, it does so precisely by occluding other ways of framing the problems, say, in terms of justice or value or freedom or self-identity." The humanities, then, provide us with the opportunity to ask the meta-level questions, the questions about our questions. How do the questions we ask prevent us from getting comprehensive answers to the problems we perceive? Or better stated: what other questions should we be asking to ensure that we do not overlook essential pieces of information?

At present, the humanities are coming under ever more intense pressure to justify their continued existence (read: funding). No cellist is going to produce a cure for cancer, and no novelist is going to invent a cheaper form of space travel. But critical training in the humanities provides a check against the type of inane question-asking that continues to guide the curiosity of eugenicists* even in our own time.

*This is fairly reprehensible. The comments are particularly ugly.

Bitcoins

Over the past couple of days, a number of articles have crossed my path regarding a recent technology/economic development: bitcoins. Bitcoins are an anarchic (read: decentralized) digital currency, but unlike most of the digital currencies of the past, bitcoins are already able to purchase things in the real world, not just online things for online endeavors. I'm no technological guru, so for those of you who want to know a bit more about how all of this is possible, I'll direct you to the this article from the economist in the hopes that you can make more of it than I can.

Among its more sinister uses, is the ability to purchase drugs anonymously. While I am a staunch supporter of the legalization of most drugs, I use the word sinister because the ability to buy things anonymously via peer-to-peer networking is easily transferable to things more malevolent than a couple of joints. One wonders about international black market arms dealers for example, and how they could exploit the site for the sale of goods to terrorists.

Of course, in the early stages of the implementation of bitcoins, it was such a small geeky network that it was easy (at least for computer geniuses) to keep track of everything that was going on. But as the bitcoin revolution has reached more and more people, things have started to deteriorate somewhat. Just this week, a hacker stole over $500,000 worth of bitcoins. Poof. Gone. There's no way to get them back. It's not a wallet that can be hunted down by the police, or a credit card that can be cancelled.

The great irony, though, which was pointed out by Adam Clark Estes reporting for The Atlantic Wire about this theft, is that the only reason the dollar amount of bitcoins was so high was that their recent publicity in mainstream(ish) media had shot the demand for bitcoins through the roof. You can check out a chart of their value in dollars over time in Estes's article here.

The larger question, though, is one of economic and political theory. The first question is whether or not the US government will allow for the continued existence of bitcoins. One wonders how they could prohibit their use, but the federal government has its hands than more things than anyone can possibly imagine. NATO forces have used cyber-attacks against Libya already. So it's my guess that the long-term legal existence of bitcoins is questionable.

As far as economic theory is concerned, bitcoins can operate as a small scale model of what doing away with the federal reserve would look like. Right-wing randian-type economists have long decried the federal reserve as interfering in free-market economics. In essence they seek to make "monetary policy" a historical anachronism. Well, the growth of bitcoins could offer some view as to what that might look like.

Regardless of where it goes, the bitcoin explosion is worth paying attention to. It has fascinated me for a couple of days now, and so I thought I'd bring it to the attention of my readers. I hope you enjoyed it.

Homework Limits in NJ; A Ban on Gothic Cats in PA; Race-Related Deaths in AL

Having gone through the newspapers and various online sources earlier today, I found it to be an exceptionally odd news day. Three particularly absurd stories caught my attention, and so I thought I'd bring them to yours.

1.) The first story comes to us from Galloway, New Jersey where the school board will vote later this summer on whether or not to limit homework to 10 minutes per night per grade level as well as whether or not to ban homework on school vacations, weekends, and holidays. While homework can certainly be taxing on young students and is sometimes not helpful to the learning process, placing limits on homework of this variety is akin to throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Some homework, after all, is helpful. I'm also puzzled as to why the school board thinks it should have such oversight over teachers.

Further befuddling is how the time limits will be measured. It's no secret that it will take different students different amounts of time to complete the same assignment, so is the limit measured by the slowest student in the class, the fastest student in the class, or an average? Before you suggest that I'm being pedantic, what if the parents of the slowest student in the class complain because he is having to do 35 minutes of homework a night in 2nd grade? Almost all the other students in the class get their assignments done in 20 minutes, but it takes this guy a bit longer. Will the teacher be forced to reduce the homework for everyone to ensure that the slowest guy doesn't exceed the limit? The teacher may fear retribution from the school board if she doesn't.

At a time when American education keeps losing ground on the rest of the developed world, it seems the absolutely wrong decision to reduce the amount of work we expect of our children. Rather than limits, we should have minimums. Everyone should be expected to do at least 'x' amount of homework each night. A limit on homework addresses a symptom (useless and too many assignments) of the larger problem that the education system is broken. We need homework and lots of it, but we need it to be the right type of homework. We need homework reform, not homework repeal.

2.) The funniest of the three absurd stories today comes from the lovely state of Pennsylvania, where a panel of judges hearing an appeal have ruled that a woman who pierced cats and bound their tails to give them a gothic look is guilty of cruel treatment of animals. While I think many would agree that binding the tail of a cat is probably cruel, the piercings represent a bit of a gray area. Is this just another area in which we insist upon more "humane" treatment for animals than for humans (as with euthanasia)?

In her defense, the defendant argued that the statutes were vague, and that such veterinary procedures as declawing cats or cutting a dog's vocal cords could also be reasonably seen to fit the criteria of "acts that maim, mutilate, torture, or disfigure the animal." So you can give your daughter a piercing at the age of five, but if you try and do it to your cat, you'll be convicted of a crime. Somebody has to explain this one to me.

The best thing about this bit of news is that I get to reference one of the greatest historical articles ever written - "The Great Cat Massacre." I've posted a link to the chapter in a book available through Google Books, and I highly recommend having a look. The long and short of it is that a few apprentices is 18th century France, fed up with their masters' cats who received better treatment than the apprentices themselves, staged a mock trial and execution of a couple dozen cats. Imagine what the reaction to such a scene would have been today!

3.) On a more serious note, the NY Times published a piece today about a black woman and her son who may have been denied entry to a church that was being used a shelter during a tornado in Cordova, Alabama. The son survived; the mother did not.

The amazing thing is that the son who survived was told by a number of people not to tell his story. He was told that it would give Cordova a bad name. The people of the town know what happened was wrong. I'm sure almost none of them would have turned away anyone asking to come inside. Unfortunately one person made that lethal decision. The town has brought the disrepute on itself by not confronting the issue head on, by not demanding that the truth come out and that the person who denied them entry be investigated.

The sad story from Cordova serves as a parable for the country as a whole. The sooner we start acknowledging the problems that plague our society - racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Antisemitism, income inequality, climate change, etc. - the sooner we can begin to fix them. When we live in the dark, constantly pretending that the problems don't exist, they will continue ad infinitum.

Let's Blame the Women: Why Sabrina Schaeffer is an Anti-Feminist

For all you straight ladies out there who were happy that some gender equality had finally infiltrated heterosexual romantic relationships, you shouldn't be, or so says Sabrina L. Schaeffer of the National Review. In fact, she finds the very idea that women should act like "one of the guys" repulsive for the sole reason that it overlooks "important differences between the sexes." So all you women shouldn't go pursuing guys. Don't ask guys out. Don't show interest. Don't participate in "laissez-faire sexual culture" because when you do, you're encouraging the type of scandal that has plagued American politics in the last 20 years.

From Anthony Weiner, to Bill Clinton, to Arnold Schwarzenegger, to John Edwards, to Eliot Spitzer, the infidelity of men can be directly tied to women who, brainwashed by "modern feminism," believe that their sexual pleasure should be satiated as well. Women, it's your fault. If we were serious about removing these type of sex scandals from our politics, the only thing we would need to do would be to provide women with compulsory morality training to teach them about how to control their sexual impulses. The training would go something like this.

Don't want. Don't desire. You exist for the pleasure of your husband. You've been duped by modern feminists into thinking that you want to experience orgasm when having procreatory sex with your husband, but this is a myth. Not only will it inhibit your ability to conceive a child, it is morally abhorrent. Cook, clean, and raise the children. This is your role, mandated by God when he designed the sexes in their different ways with their different strengths.

It's amazing to think that despite the advancement of gender equality on so many fronts (yes, I know there are many more to go), arguments like this one that seek to define the role of women are still around. Of course I have exaggerated Schaeffer's stance. She does not think that women shouldn't work professionally, but the idea that there are inherent differences between the sexes and that they should behave differently in their sexual encounters is not only a historical anachronism, it's patently absurd.

Is Schaeffer right to point out that there are problems in the way gendered interaction takes place? Of course she is. A cursory glance at the rate of sexual assault is enough to demonstrate that. But her solutions are to return to some no-longer-salient past that has defined roles for women and men. So in her fight to liberate men from bearing the brunt of the blame for sexual infidelity, by constricting the role of women she also constricts the role of men. If there is only one role for women, men must fill the opposite role - the gatekeeper and the hunter. Ironically, it is only through women's liberation that men can hope to be liberated from the hunting mandate.

So am I recommending that all you women go out and find a married man to have an affair with? Of course not. A healthy stable relationship is something most people desire. But to suggest that there is a particular way such a relationships should look is offensive at best and downright oppressive at worst. Schaeffer hints at the attack on marriage at some point, which given the heteronormativity of the rest of the piece, may well be an attack on homosexuality. In the end, we must love how we want to while being open with our partner(s) about the choices we are making. In a system of perfect information, it seems foolish and constricting to suggest that relationships should be this way or that way. So go home Ms. Schaeffer, and take your antiquated ideas about romantic relationships and gender norms with you.

USA 1 - 0 Guadeloupe

The US went into the game tonight playing for second place in the group. After Canada’s 1-1 draw with Panama, they end up on four points and Panama on seven. That means that US needed only a draw against Guadeloupe to progress, holding both the head-to-head and goal difference tiebreakers with Canada. A win, however, should be the minimum demanded of the players after their pathetic loss to Panama.

Bob Bradley opted to pair Bocanegra with Goodson in the center of defense with Eric Lichaj coming in to play left back. The only other change from the starting lineups from the previous two games is the replacement of Agudelo with Wondolowski.

The game got off to a cracking start and Guadeloupe should have been up 1-0 inside 5 minutes when Lichaj blocked a shot onto the crossbar. But that was as close as Guadeloupe would come to the American net. The Americans responded immediately, however, and Dempsey forced the Guadeloupe goalie Grandel into his first of many excellent saves from a dipping free kick. Inside 10 minutes Altidore put away the only goal of the game, picking up the ball about 30 yards out, taking a touch, and firing a stunning drive into the top corner. Although it looked as if Grandel might have done better, it was an excellent strike. One hopes that it opens the floodgates for Altidore.

The rest of the first half contained a plethora of chances for the US. Cherundolo and Lichaj did well getting down the flanks, and Wondolowski had some good hold-up play through the middle. Bradley and Jones were spraying the ball all around the field with great aplomb. But the US really should have scored at least one or two more.

One had the feeling the second half might bring the glut of goals many Americans had been waiting for. But the only good chance fell to Dempsey, who hit another brilliant free kick off the crossbar. But that was the only bright spot for Dempsey in what may well have been the worst half he's ever played for the US. Donovan, Dempsey, Wondolowski, and others all missed real sitters.

It's been a tremendously disappointing group stage for the US. If they play like they did in any of these games against Jamaica on Sunday, they'll go out of tournament at the quarterfinal stage. And even if they improve a little bit, there's no way they're going to come close to beating Mexico who have just been fantastic in every game so far.

Man of the Match: Franck Grandel, GK. He was fantastic for Guadeloupe, racking up 9 saves, which didn't include several forays to pick up loose balls or crosses.

Income Inequality

The joys of summer and having nothing to do allowed me the opportunity to finally read all of Timothy Noah's excellent analysis of The Great Divergence, which has, since its publication in September 2010, won the Hillman Prize for magazine journalism for reporting that "fosters social and economic justice." The piece fully merits the prize and if you have time, I suggest reading it in entirety for yourself. I thought I'd offer a brief synopsis and then suggest some relevance given the Republican Presidential Candidates Debate last night.

The great divergence refers to the growing income inequality in the United States. Income inequality refers to the difference between the percentage of income taken in by the wealthy and by the poor. A superficial acquaintance with the last century of American history is probably enough to take a stab at what the charts look like. Income inequality (measured by the income share of the top 10%) was extremely high through the Great Depression (at about 45%), but dropped dramatically during World War II, as many more women entered the workforce and men who previously didn't have access to higher education went to college on the GI Bill. From the 40's through the 70's, income inequality remained fairly stagnant with top 10% income share in the low 30%s. Since that time, however, income inequality has exploded. There were enormous leaps during the Reagan, Clinton, and Bush II years, leading to almost 50% of income being concentrated in the wealthiest 10% of all Americans by 2007.

Noah's report on income inequality takes the form of a ten-part series, with part 1 being an introduction and part 10, the conclusion. In parts 2-8, Noah assesses some of the possible explanations for the great divergence, and offers a breakdown of the degree to which each factored into the rapid rise in income inequality. Each of the sections is available individually, so if you want a more complete analysis of any one, please feel free to read the individual sections, but I'll offer Noah's final analysis.

Race/gender: 0%

Immigration: 5%

"Imagined uniqueness of computers as a transformative technology": 0%

Tax Policy: 5%

Decline of Labor: 20%

Trade: 10%

Wall Street "pampering" of the "Stinking Rich": 30%

Education system failures: 30%

The breakdowns of the cause don't necessarily equate to the breakdowns of the solutions. For example, tax policy could in fact have consequences on things such as Wall Street's pampering of the Stinking Rich, and government policy could well have an impact on the decline of labor. In essence, everything on the list can be controlled by some form of government policy. So now let's take a step back to last night, and think about some of the Republican ideas for ways to stimulate the economy.

One proposal was the removal or halving of the capital gains tax. A capital gain taxes income from investments such as stock dividends, mutual funds, hedge funds, money markets, and all sorts of other advanced things I don't really understand. Of course, you have to have a lot of money to have more than a negligible amount of capital gains. While the tax on short term capital gains is identical to the income tax rate, the tax on long term capital gains is already significantly less than the income tax rate for the same income bracket. Cutting the capital gains tax, then, is equivalent to cutting taxes on a large source of income for the wealthiest segment of the American population.

Another key point articulated over and over again by Republicans last night was that the government should stop regulating Wall Street. Of course, if the pampering of Wall Street executives is one of the primary causes of income inequality (as Noah suggests), then if the government has a vested interest in reducing income inequality, regulating compensation to Wall Street executives (especially those of failing companies) doesn't seem like the worst idea.

Republicans have also been long-time opponents of organized labor, but this issue has been thrust into the spotlight again recently because of the high profile case in Wisconsin. But if the decline of labor is one of the biggest factors of the great divergence, then shouldn't the government be looking to encourage organized labor rather than break it apart?

In short, most of the major economic policies of the Republican field expressed last night will not only fail to end the great divergence, they will encourage its growth. Reducing taxes on the wealthy, in the form of capital gains, estate, or general income tax, will result in the budget deficit becoming even greater, yet Republicans want to cap the ceiling on the national debt. So either there must be enormous cuts in spending or the tax rate on lower and middle income families is going to have to be raised. Even Obama has been drawn into this mess, extending the Bush era tax cuts for everyone, after it had been thought that he would allow them to lapse on the highest two income brackets.

With American society now being more unequal than almost all of its counterparts in the developed world, history has witnessed a 180 degree reversal. Whereas in the early years of the republic, Europeans migrated to America for reasons of social mobility, it would now be logical if the trend shifted, with poor Americans emigrating to a more mobile more equal Europe. If I were to speak the language of politics, I would say that America has forsaken its founding creed as the land of opportunity.

Republican Presidential Candidates Debate

I thought I'd offer some thoughts on tonight's Republican Presidential Candidates Debate. The candidates are Rick Santorum (RS), Michelle Bachmann (MB), Newt Gingrich (NG), Mitt Romney (MR), Tim Pawlenty (TP), Ron Paul (RP), Herman Cain (HC). I'll use those abbreviations to refer to them throughout.

It's impossible to win the nomination this far away from the primaries but it is possible to lose it. I think with that in mind, none of the candidates said anything too outlandish. There were no huge flubs, and despite HC's inexperience, NG's disastrous campaign thus far, and MB's penchant for firebrand rhetoric, everyone seemed to escape relatively unscathed. I think there's a general consensus that the night was pretty good for MR and MB, and that nobody really lost.

With the fact that the candidates did everything in their power to keep from distinguishing themselves from one another tonight, let's look at a few of the moments that stood out.

The question that produced the best responses by far was in regard to HC's comment that he would be uncomfortable with Muslims in his cabinet. He made a fascinating attempt to clarify his comments by stating that he was referencing the Muslims who are trying to kill us, not the loyal ones. Thanks HC, because I really thought that you were going to appoint some terrorists to your cabinet. But if HC's response was bad, Gingrich's was even worse. Gingrich alluded to Nazism and communism and talked about how loyalty tests had done a good job weeding these people out of government. Our country has certainly come a long way indeed if a presidential candidate can make veiled references in support of McCarthyism.

The questions about gay rights also elicited some interesting responses. RP and HC affirmed that decisions about gay rights should be left entirely to the states, with RP going so far as to say that issues of marriage should not have anything to do with the federal government whatsoever. The rest of the candidates were outspoken for a constitutional amendment defining marriage as between a man and a woman. The candidates did differ somewhat as to what to do about the repeal of DADT. HC and RP said they would leave the new Obama policy in tact, NG and MR said they would want to overturn it, RS said people should be punished for engaging in homosexual behavior in the military, and MB thought DADT was still in effect and said it should be continued.

Newt Gingrich's high point of the evening came when talking about illegal immigration. He argued that we've been sucked into a false either/or where we can either treat people humanely and grant amnesty to or deport the estimated 20 million illegal immigrants in the country. He said we can do some of both simultaneously. Gingrich's answer was all the more impressive given that it came on the heels of TP supporting SB1070, RP arguing that a 5 year-old illegal shouldn't receive care in an emergency room, and HC arguing that the children of illegal immigrants born here shouldn't become citizens. It was a generally a question that everyone else scampered to the right on while NG was willing to identify it as a more complex issue.

The real name of the game tonight seemed to be who can hit Obama the hardest. While I understand their desire to distance themselves from Obama's policy, some of the blows seemed to be especially harsh given that some of the candidates currently hold elected office in Congress and have to work with Obama. I wouldn't want to work with people who said things like that about me. It was more indicative of the partisanship in this country than it was of a serious intellectual debate on differing conservative ideas.

The best moment of the night by far came during the last commercial break, when there was an advertisement for medicine to help ease constipation - as if the product's marketing department knew that listening to seven Republicans blathering on about the horrible state of the economy and Obama's leadership for two hours would be enough to make anyone constipated.

Oh, and if you like trees... or flowers... or animals... or clean air... or clean water... don't vote for MB. She wants to dismantle the EPA entirely.

The Right To Die

Dr. Jack Kevorkian's unfortunate recent death has unsurprisingly reinvigorated discussions about end-of-life decisions. This seems an appropriate legacy for a man who knowingly sacrificed years of his life to prison to stimulate discussion about an issue he cared about deeply. As a paragon of dedication to the cause of intellectualism, Kevorkian's work merits thoughtful reflection (and hopefully discussion) here.

In the wake of his passing, Ross Douthat wrote an article praising American society for jailing Kevorkian. "It should make us proud of our country that he would... find himself in prison, where murderers belong." Douthat's position is not uncommon - many people find Kevorkian's work abhorrent. The question is why.

Douthat offers a reframing of the debate about doctor assisted suicide. He claims that free will rather than humanitarianism is the linchpin of the argument. Douthat suggests that "even when death is inevitable and inevitably painful, it is not considered merciful to prescribe an overdose to a cancer victim against her will, or to gently smother a sleeping Alzheimer's patient." I think this is a dangerous statement from Douthat; he conflates ignorance with opposition. In the two examples provided here, the patients have not been consulted. They are ignorant to the fact that someone has thought of ending their lives. This represents a third distinct category from those who have expressed a desire to die and those who have expressed a desire to live. I believe this class of people, especially those who cannot express such desires, merits further consideration. Nevertheless the focus of this piece is on those who express the desire to die.

Douthat seems to think that his reframing of the debate sufficiently demonstrates his point, that doctor assisted suicide is bad. The "not hypothetical slippery slope" envisioned by Douthat is one that would allow MS patients and quadriplegics and manic depressives and "devastated widowers" to affirm a right to die. Why yes, Ross, it would. It seems tremendously silly to think that we have a right to life enshrined int he Declaration of Independence, but we don't have a right to death. In fact, Douthat is suggesting that we don't have a right to life at all; it is an obligation.

Imagine if some of our other rights operated like this. There would be no plea deals in the judicial system - we would be obliged to trial by jury. We would all own firearms. We would have an obligation to freely assemble and to express our views. We would be obligated to petition the government. Evidently, Douthat's argument is that an individual life is not one's own. Life is apparently so valuable that the government can prohibit the choice to end one's own. This raises an interesting scenario in that the government will kill people who don't want to die while prohibiting those who do want to die from taking their own lives.

The ending of one's own life is a serious decision - not one to be taken lightly, and so there could be procedures in place to ensure that people were not doing so indiscriminately. There could be a psychological evaluation required to ensure the patient was not suffering from some treatable mental illness. There could be a waiting period to ensure that the patient had sufficient time to think through this option and all its alternatives.

We live in a society in which the most basic individual right is denied. Is it because taking one's own life is unnatural? Well, so are transplants, surgeries, and medicine. We will extend your life, we will take it for you if you commit heinous crimes, but if you want to end it yourself, you're out of luck. The only thing more ironic would be if the penalty for attempted suicide were death.