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.