South Dakota Politics

Captain America

We took in Captain America this evening.  A week late, but better than never. Since Prof. Blanchard is skinning Canadians rather than doing his usual comic book movie duty, I will pinch hit for him. In brief, the film has its flaws, but is overall good clean American fun.

Starting with the Spiderman series, the introduction of a new comic book hero in film has become a bit cliche. Some guy (it's almost always a guy) is leading average Joe life and through a deus ex machina he attains super powers. He plays around with these powers until he masters them, just in time to foil his arch rival who happens to have gained a similar power in a similar way. 

Captain America does not deviate significantly from this story, but its introduction of Steve Rogers, aka Captain America, has you so rooting for the guy that you overlook the familiar storyline. A pencil-neck geek, Rogers yearns to join the Army during WWII. After being turned down multiple times due to poor health, a scientist sees in him promise. There is a scene with a fake grenade that cements Rogers' credentials as a hero.  It is not Rogers' physical attributes, but his essential goodness that gets him chosen for a special project that will ultimately make him into a muscle-bound superhero. 

The film takes a bit of a turn in that Rogers is not allowed to use his powers. Instead, a publicity seeking congressman uses Rogers to sell war bonds. Captain America arises not as a soldier, but as an advertising campaign. Rogers is frustrated by this, but ultimately gets his chance at combat when his best buddy's unit is captured by Hydra, the evil organization headed by Red Skull, a German so demented that even Hitler is not evil enough for him. 

What ensues is a standard but well done action film with the appropriate amounts of "blow 'em up" and wise-cracks, mostly from Tommy Lee Jones who, playing a crotchety old colonel, steals virtually every scene he is in. Captain America creates a band of merry men who look like NATO (but not UN) who proceed to make war against Red Skull and his minions. The end is essentially satisfying. As with most recent Marvel films, there is an indication that more is to come. Obviously a film with all (or most) of the Avengers is coming soon.

Remember in "Superman Returns" when the film makers couldn't quite stomach Superman saying he's for "Truth, justice and the American way"? Captain America does not suffer from this complex. While there is nothing blazingly pro-American about the film (as I say, the "good guys" represent all of NATO), it is unambiguously pro-freedom.  And, hey, the damn film is called Captain America and he has an American flag on his shield. At no point is this emphasized, but at no point does the film apologize for it. It speaks for itself. During a climatic fight with Red Skull, the antagonist says the future will be a world without flags, and Captain America responds, "Not my future." Again, this is done subtly (just a line in an action scene) but it is there

I have only two criticisms of the film. We expect a film of this sort to have its share of moments when the laws of physics are defied, but this film, especially toward the end, has more than its fair share. I am more sensitive to these things than others, so perhaps you won't mind. Also, I dislike tacked-on love stories in my action films, and the love story in this film seems just that: tacked-on. I think this ended up short-shrifting us from what could have been exciting and witty adventures with CA's "merry men." As it is, we barely see them in action. Again, I get annoyed at what I think are superfluous love stories more than most, so perhaps you can look past this as well. 

Finally, a word about 3D. In Aberdeen 3D was our only option for this film. I confess that I wouldn't have chosen to see this film in that format if given the choice (as I chose not to see Harry Potter in 3D a couple weeks ago). I tend to find 3D not worth the extra money. In this case I thought it was worth it. It certainly gave the film a more comic book texture to it.  On the other hand, because the 3D glasses are tinted, it made the film a little too dark so at times with no action I eventually began flipping the glasses off.

Overall, I recommend Captain America.  I can also second Prof. Blanchard's endorsement of Harry Potter. If you have small children, the new Winnie-the-Pooh film is wonderful. My two year old was transfixed. There is also a short film that precedes it that is absolutely moving. 

Update: Thanks to commenter Bugs I have changed the quote in the CA/Red Skull flag discussion above to more accurately represent what Captain America actually says rather than paraphrasing. 

 

Have Breached Canada's Defenses

The Tilley hat disguise worked perfectly.  Proceeding to scout the territory.  Beer good.  Canadians helpful.  Below is a shot from Ketchikan, Alaska.  Agent unidentified.  

The Circus in the Senate

It's the 11th hour and disaster is looming! We have got to raise the debt ceiling now! This was the position of the Democrats - until today. Now, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, that bastion of reasonability, is...filibustering his own bill. Recently, John McCain chided Republicans for trying to pass any bill that included a balanced budget amendment, because, he said, it had no chance of passing with the senate's current makeup. Now, Reid, apparently expecting his own bill to fail, is scrambling to prevent a vote on it, in spite of Senator Mitch McConnell's assurance that he would "be happy to have that vote tonight." It will be interesting to see how this latest move affects the polls.

As a side note: Just when I thought the debt ceiling debate couldn't get any sillier, John McCain introduced hobbits! And now I want to go to another Tea Party!

On Second Thought...

Well, once again, I have egg on my face. After my last post, reader Bill Fleming rightly took me to task for jumping on the first poll that spoke to my biases.

Since then, I have been paying more attention to the polls, and it looks as if my first analysis was probably quite wrong. Most (but not all) recent polls do seem to show that the public is unhappy with Republicans than it is with Democrats. Part of this is, no doubt, because of division within the Republican Party itself. Some conservatives, for instance, are opposed to raising the debt ceiling at all. Therefore, Boehner’s plan does not appeal to them, because it does not go far enough. Congressional Republicans are not receiving the support from their party they might have if the party was completely unified.

Others - particularly Democrats - may be influenced by Harkin’s accusations that the Republican Party has been hijacked by crazy Tea Partiers. It is interesting; however, that Harkin uses this as his attack, because Boehner is actually presenting a compromise. Instead of directly attacking this plan, Harkin attacks Michele Bachmann for opposing the raising of the debt ceiling under any circumstances, but Bachmann is not in charge of Boehner’s plan and the speaker himself is offering what most Americans seem to be claiming they want – a compromise that includes raising the debt ceiling along with spending cuts.

It is also interesting to note that, according to many of the same polls that show the public as happier with Democrats than Republicans, many of the ideas offered by the Democrats are opposed by the people. For instance, according to a poll done by CNN, the majority of Americans oppose cutting defense spending. According to a recent poll by ABC, meanwhile, most also say that they believe that the actions of President Obama to address economic challenges have made things worse, rather than better. Meanwhile, more Americans seem to believe in spending cuts alone, rather than taxation alone.

Reasonability and the Runaway Republican Bride

Republicans and Democrats still have not reached an agreement on their debate over raising the debt ceiling. President Obama is blaming Republicans. According to The Atlantic, he is voicing his exasperation by asking, “Can they say yes to anything?”

The President is joined in his criticism of Republicans by Senator Tom Harkin, who has tried to demonize those who oppose raising the debt ceiling, by calling them a “cult fringe”.

In fact, we know what Republicans will say yes to. So does the president and so does Harkin. Boehner and the Republicans are the ones who came to the debate with a plan already laid out. They have been clear about what they will accept.

And while Harkin declares that the Republicans are the only ones who will let the country “go down the tubes” by defaulting, the Democrats can also save us from default, by accepting Boehner’s last offer. Therefore, one could just as easily argue that government spending is more important to Harkin and company than saving America from default. One might, also, just as easily ask whether or not the Democrats could say yes to anything.

So far, they have said no every offer The Republicans have given them. And although Democrats like Harkin have tried to paint Republicans as unreasonable, a recent poll conducted by The Hill suggests that his attempts at demonization have been unsuccessful. Indeed, Sean J. Miller says the following:

A new poll conducted for The Hill showed 41 percent polled said the GOP had been “more reasonable,” while 29 percent said Democrats had been more sensible. Twenty-two percent said neither party was more reasonable than the other, and 7 percent were not sure.

  I suspect that much of this has to do with the way representatives from both parties have conducted themselves. Democrats like Harkin come off looking angry and frustrated, while Boehner and Bachmann have come out looking relatively calm. But some of it probably has to do with the fact that the Republicans seem more willing than Democrats to address the ills of overspending, which lie at the heart of the problem.

Obama declares that he has been “left at the altar” twice now. When a groom spends more of his time criticizing his bride than he does preparing for his wedding – can he really be surprised when she runs away?

Trickledown v. Trickle Around Economics

I’m no economist, so I will be the first to admit that there is a lot about the debate over America’s debt that I don’t even begin to understand. But, since Dr. Blanchard is traveling, you’re stuck with me for a time. Therefore, I thought I’d try my best to wrap my head around some of it. No doubt most readers have a better understanding than I have, but that’s never stopped me before!

According Senator Marco Rubio, America’s deficit problem is simple: We’re spending too much money and we’re not taking enough money in. The way to solve this problem, according to Rubio, is to cut trillions of dollars worth of spending and to spur the creation of jobs by simplifying the tax code and reforming governmental regulations that make it unattractive for employers to do business.

Rubio and his counterparts seem to put a lot of stock in President Reagan’s idea of “trickledown economics.” The idea is that if the government makes it easier for businesses to become profitable, companies will hire more workers (or hire American workers instead of shipping jobs overseas, where the business climate is more favorable). When businesses hire more workers, the government will receive more capital through taxation, because more people will make enough money to begin paying taxes on it.

Liberals like Paul Krugman argue that trickledown economics does not and has not worked. They suggest that the solution to our debt problem is more spending. As I understand it, the idea is that if you spend enough money on job creation, you then have more taxable workers and less unemployment.

At first blush, it seems like using tax money to create federal jobs would do little to solve the problem. If the government (or really, the taxpayers), pays the salaries of federal workers, it isn’t taking in more money, it’s just shuffling it around a bit. But those who believe in Keynesian economics note that creating jobs has indirect benefits. By creating new jobs, the government either directly employs formerly unemployed workers, or it hires workers who were in other positions. The unemployed are then supposed to fill in the gaps left behind. This is supposed to decrease unemployment, which, in turn, is supposed to increase confidence and the willingness to spend and circulate money, thereby leading to economic recovery.

To me, this sounds suspiciously similar to trickle-down economics. The government, like a rich employer, creates new jobs for its “business.” These new employees, with their newfound prosperity are meant to begin spending money, which is supposed to stimulate the economy and lead to success in both the public and the private sector.

There are, of course some major differences in the two approaches. In the conservative version, business owners are in charge of hiring new workers. Here, businesses spend their own money to create new jobs and the government takes in more capital through taxation. In the liberal plan, the government is at the helm and it spends our money to create more jobs. And, because presumably the government adds jobs at many different levels, perhaps the approach is better referred to as “trickle around”, rather than trickledown economics.

It will probably come as no surprise when I say that I prefer the conservative plan. I prefer it, because I do not think the liberal plan has worked. We have been engaged in massive government spending since Bush was in office. Under Bush, federal and government employment increased substantially. Indeed, National Review’s Veronique de Rugy writes the following:

Under Bush, private employment shrank by 673,000 jobs, federal employment grew by 50,000 jobs, and government employment grew by 1,753,000 jobs.

If private employment were increasing along with federal and governmental employment and the creation of new jobs actually led to more private employment, or some sort of boom in the private sector, perhaps the liberal plan would work. But, instead, private jobs seem to have been disappearing when new federal jobs have been created. This presents a problem for the government and for the economy. This is because it costs the government more to employ each federal worker than it will ever get back from taxes. The more jobs we shift out of the private sector and into the public sector, the less money we will be able to generate from taxes. Allowing businesses to operate privately and making it easier and more attractive for them to hire workers seems to me to be a better way for the government to bring in more capital.

I join the 30% Club

The 30% who come to Denali and acually see the danged mountain.  It is magnificent.  Above is yesterday.  Today there wasn't a cloud in the sky. 

The Real Extremists

A recent poll of voters in Iowa shows Michelle Bachmann up 13 points over Mitt Romney (her nearest challenger). Magellan Strategies (the group responsible for the survey) says the following:

Michele Bachmann has broad support across all voting subgroups, with particular strength among men and social conservatives. Among the 44% of respondents that identified themselves as a member of the Tea Party movement, Michele Bachmann leads by 33 points.

But as Bachmann’s popularity surges, attacks against her have grown more vicious. Perhaps the worst example comes from Marc Maron, who said the following a few days ago on Bill Maher’s HBO show:

I don’t wanna be crass, but I just hope that Marcus Bachmann takes all that, y’know that rage that comes from repression and denial and brings it into the bedroom with her [laughter]. I hope he f--s her angrily, because that’s how I would. And I’ve thought about it [more laughter].

The attacks on Bachmann are similar to those launched at Sarah Palin during her presidential campaign.  Sandra Bernhard, for instance warned Palin that she would be “gang-raped by my big black brothers” if she were to come to Manhattan.

The attacks on Palin and Bachmann have attracted some attention, but the sex-related verbal attacks on conservative men are just as troubling.

During the Palin campaign, NBC aired a Saturday Night Live skit that featured a segment  suggesting that Todd Palin might be having sex with his own daughters. On the aforementioned Bill Maher show, Maron portrayed Marcus Bachmann as angry, repressed and possibly animalistic. Shortly thereafter, fellow guest Dan Savage portrayed Senator Rick Santorum as someone to be sexually victimized, saying the following:

Just so that we don’t get charges of sexism, because only Michelle Bachmann was (unintelligible), I sometimes think about f_cking the shit out of Rick Santorum.

Marcus Bachmann and Rick Santorum have been portrayed as extremists because of their views on homosexuality. But never, to my knowledge, has either man advocated violence toward gays or to political opponents. Never have I heard either one of them say anything remotely like this.

I would suggest, therefore, that the real extremists are men like Maron and Savage, who delight in daydreaming about subjecting those who disagree with them to rape and violence.

Savage, who recently served as grand marshall for the Gay Pride Parade in New York City, is not doing the Gay Rights movement any favors by behaving the way he does. Proponents of the movement often suggest that their movement is one that advocates love and tolerance. Savage is not advocating either of those things. Instead, he is laughing about the thought of sexually assaulting a man with whom he has political differences. That should appall anyone.

 

Harry Potter & The Deathly Hallows Pt. 2

I once spent a good half hour failing to convince my English professor and friend, Meade Harwell, to read The Lord of the Rings. This would have been in the mid 70's. Harwell was a fine teacher in the old school sense. I learned how to read short stories in his class and that lesson has served me well ever since.

I argued that 1) the book was rooted in a rich, genuine scholarship; 2) it had a profound and apparently durable impact on a generation of readers; and 3) it was a rocking good story. He didn't consider LOTR to be serious literature and that was that.

I think I have been vindicated at least on point 2. The Harry Potter novels have certainly had the greatest impact of any new work of literature (serious or not) in my lifetime. They are in many respects deeply derivative of LOTR. Ordinary folks are guided by a white-haired, white robed wizard to defeat a transcendently evil wizard. They do so by destroying magical objects in which the villain has invested his power and being. If you are interested in the place of Harry Potter in literary culture, you need to know LOTR.

Slate has a two part conversation between two editors who had neither read the books nor seen any of the movies. Between the two parts, they watch Deathly Hallows Part 2. It does confirm one of my opinions about the last two films: that they rely heavily on the audience knowing pretty much the whole story in advance. Having seen only the final installment, they have only the dimmest idea what is going on. The one thing they do know going in is that Dumbledore is gay, something that has absolutely nothing to do with the books or the films.

DH2 is magnificent. Given that it had to squeeze half of 759 pages into two hours, it is close to perfection. One reason is precisely that it bothers to explain almost nothing, so it can devote itself to the action. The action is so stunning and the pacing so perfect that, unless you are allergic to fantasy fiction and have no idea what is going on, you'd enjoy it. It does, however, rely on a vast audience with a very good idea of the story. Few film makers have been in a position to rely on that as much as they did here.

DH1 was very good. DH2 is much, much better. That's largely because the second half of Deathly Hallows was a lot better than the first half. DH1 was the long slog, rather analogous to Frodo's dreadful walk through the black half of Middle Earth. In DH2, all the fault lines move and all of the molten story lines spew up out of the bedrock into the air.

MODEST SPOILER ALERT

Relatively few viewers will not know how the story ends. I will tell you that the conversation between Harry and the Goblin Griphook at Shell Cottage was superb. I cried twice during the movie, both times involved the fate and back story of Severus Snape. I came to love Snape more than any other character in the novels. I guessed correctly when first reading the early books that Snape was a son of a bitch, but not evil. The revelation of Snape's story revealed that this fact about him constituted a genuine classical tragedy. If he had been a nicer person or even had a sense of humor, he might not have lost his love. Were it not for his love and the influence of Dumbledore, he would have escaped the agony and sacrifice that were the whole story of his life after Lilly. Being good does not always go unpunished.

Finally, both LOTR and HP share an argument. Good muggles and wizards have no trouble understanding the motives and stratagems of their evil advisories. Evil, by contrast, encourages an asymmetrical blindness. Why does Sauron not anticipate that his enemies will try to destroy the ring? He cannot believe that anyone would give up such a power. Voldemort recognizes only pride, greed and fear; he cannot conceive of genuine courage. As a result he is always chasing the wrong thing at the moment, leaving Harry, Hermione and Ron the space they need to operate. Note to the Dark Lord: when you're down to one horcrux, don't take your reptilian eyes off the damn snake.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 is a very satisfactory end to this cinematic adventure.

Does Health Insurance Ensure Health? No.

Okay, so candidate Barack Obama told a bit of a fib about his mother. From the New York Times:

During his presidential campaign and subsequent battle over a health care law, Mr. Obama quieted crowds with the story of his mother's fight with her insurer over whether her cancer was a pre-existing condition that disqualified her from coverage…

But in "A Singular Woman: The Untold Story of Barack Obama's Mother," author Janny Scott quotes from correspondence from the president's mother to assert that the 1995 dispute concerned a Cigna disability insurance policy and that her actual health insurer had apparently reimbursed most of her medical expenses without argument.

The candidate's tale was fabricated. Ann Dunham did not have to struggle with her health insurer or worry whether her family would be left with the bills. Was it an outright lie? Ann Althouse thinks so. Meagan McArdle is more inclined to be charitable.

A lot of the right is no doubt going to jump on Obama as a liar, but I think it's entirely plausible that this is how he remembered it: it was a terrible time, and memory is unreliable.

McArdle thinks Obama should have checked, and that is good enough for me. What is important is that, when we mortals misremember things, we often do so according to a script. I seem to remember that there has been a lot of this going around: folks telling stories about denial of coverage and denied care that turn out to be phony.

Michelle Malkin, one of those on the right who jumped on Obama, has a nice catalog of such stories. Some of them, frankly, concede something to the other side. Insurance companies sometimes do have to be compelled by public pressure to do the right thing. Of course the same is true of all government agencies.

What is obvious is that proponents of big government health care reform have not found it easy to come up with juicy stories without, consciously or not, doing a lot of embellishment.

All of this, however, confuses two important but distinct questions: would a better health insurance system ensure financial security for more people, and would a better health insurance system make more people healthier?

One of the things that reform proponents like to say is that better health insurance coverage would save lives. If I remember correctly (see above) my friend Cory Heidelberger has said so. If fact, there is little reason to believe that health insurance improves health. Meagan McArdle has argued to the contrary in The Atlantic. I strongly recommend that you read that whole piece. In a recent Atlantic blog post she points this out:

To illustrate the problem, note that many of the studies that show big mortality impacts from being uninsured show even bigger mortality impacts from being on Medicare and Medicaid, even after controlling for age and income: you are more likely to die if you are on government insurance than if you have no insurance at all. Is it probable that going on Medicare or Medicaid kills you?

McArdle argues not, but I would point out that it surely doesn't indicate that going on Medicare or Medicaid will save you.

In that same post, McArdle examines a recent study of an experiment conducted by the State of Oregon. File under "federalism, laboratories of democracy". Oregon opened up Medicaid to a number of low income adults, selected by lottery. A lot of ObamaCare cheerleaders are cheering about the results, but what did they show?

What the study found is moderate but significant impacts on finances and self-reports of less stress and better health. Giving people free health insurance does in fact make them feel better about their situation. There was some increase in utilization, including such things as health screening. That's supposed to be one of the magic bullets of government guaranteed health insurance. But it the increase was not impressive. From the actual report:

First, we examined hospital utilization for seven conditions of interest and of reasonably high prevalence in our population: heart disease, diabetes, skin infections, mental disorders, alcohol and substance abuse, back problems, and pneumonia. We found a statistically significant increase in utilization (both extensive and total) only for heart disease.

Well, that's something. But what about the bottom line: did it save lives? No.

As for lower mortality--economist-speak for "confirms that Medicaid does, indeed, save lives", the authors didn't find any such thing. I quote: "Panel A shows that we do not detect any statistically significant improvement in survival probability."

The problem with the health care reform movement is that it has never been much interested in health care. It has been about expanding government control over the health care system. That may or may not be a good idea, but if that is your most precious idea, you won't bother paying attention to real indicators of health. You already know what the good thing is. You won't be tempted to step back and examine the system as a whole. You won't be much interested in what really works on a local level. You will see the Oregon study as a great vindication, despite the conspicuous lack of real results. You may even be tempted to fib about your mother.

Of Medicare & Medicaid & Whether PIIGS Have Wings

I have pointed out in recent posts that, according to the CBO, the U.S. is on the road to insolvency. I have argued that those who strenuously oppose any cuts in Medicare and Medicaid benefits are not doing those programs any favors. My friend Cory Heidelberger wrote an interesting post in reply that I didn't see until the other day.

Cory argues that his position, a "commitment to maintaining benefits over reducing the deficit," is more popular even among Republicans than my position, which is presumably a commitment to reducing the deficit over maintain benefits." I could point out that this is the kind of false choice frequently criticized by our President. I think that benefits are going to be reduced one way or another of necessity and the only way of protecting benefits is to bring the deficit under control. Cory doesn't bother to address the fiscal realities. He seems to think that the only issue is who wins the next election, and he may well be right in his analysis of public opinion.

I continue to think that the more important question is the viability of the U.S. economy and the larger world economy. I note that the fiscal mess in the European community is not getting better. Greece is going to default. Portugal, Ireland, and Spain are headed in the same direction. Now, however, the PIGS have become the PIIGS. See Meagan McArdle:

Italy's budget deficits are relatively modest compared to, say, Ireland, but their debt is about 120% of GDP. The government has passed a plan that will balance the budget by 2014, but as with most such plans, most of the cutting comes later, while the current cuts are small. This may well be sensible fiscal policy, given the current economic climate, but it is not reassuring to the markets.

Italy's debt/GDP is almost twice as large as that of the U.S. It will take us more than a decade to get there at the present rate. The problem is that governments running deficits have to borrow from someone, and lenders charge interest. When the confidence of lenders declines, they charge more for their money. As interest rates increase, it is harder for governments to balance their budgets. Italy's interest rates are going up. If Italy goes critical, the European crisis goes global. American banks are woven into a web of global financial institutions.

Italy's problem is the general problem and it is our problem. Governments everywhere have spent beyond their means. China is awash with debt. There is on one to bail us all out.

Or perhaps we should ignore the rest of the world and focus on the anemic recovery and dismal job growth at home. From Dan Henninger at the Wall Street Journal:

Robert Lucas, the 1995 Nobel laureate in economics, has spent his career thinking about why economies grow, and in particular about the effect of policy making on growth. From his office at the University of Chicago, Prof. Lucas has been wondering, like the rest of us, why, if the recession officially ended in the first half of 2009, there hasn't been more growth in the U.S. economy. He's also been wondering why this delayed recovery resembles the long non-recovery years of the 1930s. And he has been thinking about the U.S. and Europe…

"Is it possible that by imitating European policies on labor markets, welfare and taxes, the U.S. has chosen a new, lower GDP trend? If so, it may be that the weak recovery we have had so far is all the recovery we will get."

What Cory wants is what most liberals want: for the U.S. to be more like Europe. They may be getting their wish.

Forgotten in most discussions of the U.S.-Europe comparison is that for the first 70 years of the 20th century, continental Europe's growth rose alongside that of the world-leading U.S. and U.K., especially after World War II. Through the 1960s, he says, there was every reason to expect a common, high living standard for all of us. Then, "in the 1970s, their catch-up stalled."

A 20% to 40% gap in income levels emerged between the U.S. and Europe, reflecting a lowered European work effort. In Prof. Lucas's view, that gap represents the cost (largely taxes) of financing a larger welfare state from 1970 onward. Other economists, he says, have cited a 30% loss in GDP per person in Western Europe since the 1970s.

"If we're going to move to a European welfare state," says Prof. Lucas, "we're going to have to pay a European price." And that price could be a permanently lower level of GDP per person. The U.S.'s amazing 100-year ride would slow.

Cory and I have lived our lives in an America that was very different from Europe. I think we were better off for it. He may disagree. I think that his insistence on benefits over fiscal responsibility will, if it wins out, mean that the average Joe will have to accept a poorer future. Worse still, I think that it risks economic catastrophe. Either way, I think that economic realities are more important than who wins the next election.

Rep. Ellison's Strange Remarks

When Representative Keith Ellison gave his speech against the hearings on Radical Islam, I sympathized with him. I was particularly struck by his story of a young Muslim paramedic who lost his life in the attacks on 9/11. Ellison went to tears as he explained that after the attacks, people tried to smear this young man’s character, by suggesting that he was in league with the attackers. Ellison was right to object to this and the story grieved me. But it is unfortunate that the representative is only against character smearing when it affects people he likes. He is now doing his best to smear Republicans like Michelle Bachmann.

Today, he said we were living in “an age of extremism.” His version of extremism has nothing to do with car bombs or global terrorism.  Nor does it have anything to do with female genital mutilation or the problem of gendercide. It doesn’t even have anything to do with greenhouse gasses. Apparently, what’s extreme to Rep. Ellison, is, well, shrinking the government. Oh. And being in favor of moms cooking, having babies and taking their shoes off. (Oh, the horror!)

Here’s Ellison, in his own words:

This is an age of extremism. These same people who want to shrink government til you can drown it in a bathtub also want mom to get back into the kitchen and take her shoes off and get pregnant. You understand? They are offended by a strong powerful women.

He goes on to accuse Michelle Bachmann of being one of these Republicans who are offended by a strong, powerful  “women.”  This is ironic for a number of reasons. First, because it has been the Democrats, not the Republicans, who have been bashing strong women lately. The attacks on Sarah Palin and Michele Bachmann, the two women who may have the best chance of winning the next presidential election, have been absolutely vitriolic.

But it is also ironic because you don’t get much more powerful that Michele Bachmann. Not only is she a US Representative, she also stands a decent chance of becoming the next US President. She’s leading in Iowa polls. She also supports other strong women, like Sarah Palin.

What exactly does she have to do to impress Mr. Ellison? What sort of woman does he see as strong? Well, there’s Sara Jane Olson, I suppose.  The Star Tribune (If you have access to its archives, see the article, “100 at Olson Event Talk About Case//Silent Auction at Forum Aims to Bolster Defense”) reports that Ellison supported and helped raise funds for Olson. Calling Olson a “strong woman” is a nice way to put it. Time magazine calls her a terrorist. I think that’s more accurate.

According to Time, as part of The Symbionese Liberation Army, Olson engaged in firefights with police, incited others to violence calling them to fight against the “pigs”, participated in a bank robbery that involved a fatal shooting, and planted pipe bombs with fellow SLA members. Maybe funding Sara Jane Olson’s defense is what it takes to show your support for strong women. Or maybe you just have to say nice things about women who are Democrats. Only Ellison knows.

Perhaps what is most upsetting about Ellison’s comments is that he is willing to praise women when they have engaged in acts of terror, but he acts as if the occupations of those of us who cook, clean and take care of our children are degrading. Terror ought to be horrifying. Being a Mom is anything but. Ellison’s comments are extremely demeaning and wildly inaccurate.

Is Pollution the Solution?

I've been blogging a lot about the fiscal crisis. It's time to do something more fun. The New York Times is very happy that the EPA has issued an "Aggressive Ruling on Clean Air".

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday issued a welcome and overdue rule compelling power plants in 27 states and the District of Columbia to reduce smokestack emissions that pollute the air and poison forests, lakes and streams across the eastern United States. The regulation reflects the E.P.A.'s determination to carry out its mandates under the Clean Air Act despite fierce Congressional opposition, and bodes well for progress on a host of other regulatory challenges the agency faces.

It would be churlish to complain that the Executive Branch out to pay some attention to the branch that actually makes the law. This is what happens when Congress hands over vast powers and decisions to unelected bureaucrats.

It is curious, however, that the Times is now suddenly in favor of global warming. That would be the implication of a recent study published by the National Academy of Sciences. Here is the abstract:

Given the widely noted increase in the warming effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations, it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008. We find that this hiatus in warming coincides with a period of little increase in the sum of anthropogenic and natural forcings. Declining solar insolation as part of a normal eleven-year cycle, and a cyclical change from an El Nino to a La Nina dominate our measure of anthropogenic effects because rapid growth in short-lived sulfur emissions partially offsets rising greenhouse gas concentrations. As such, we find that recent global temperature records are consistent with the existing understanding of the relationship among global surface temperature, internal variability, and radiative forcing, which includes anthropogenic factors with well known warming and cooling effects.

There is a lot in that abstract to think about. The first sentence concedes what a lot of folks pointed out and a lot of other folks tried to deny or ignore: global surface temperatures have been flat for ten years. This was not, I think, predicted by any of the models relied upon by the IPCC. A decade is a small space on the historical temperature line and may be just an anomaly. However, this clearly challenges any direct relation between an increase in greenhouse gases and a rise in global temperatures.

The third sentence acknowledges what a lot of us non-climate-scientists had already figured out: the factors driving climate change (or non-change) are rather complicated. One might suspect that the recent flattening of global temperatures is over-determined. Solar Cycles, El Nino and his sister, and a rapid growth in sulfur emissions is a lot of causation to juggle.

That last part is the kicker, surely. Apparently sulfur emissions from coal fired plants are at least partially responsible for a hiatus in global warming. If true, isn't that really big news? All the world community's great efforts toward addressing climate change have so far contributed nothing to addressing climate change. All they have done is provide an excuse for jetting a lot of bureaucrats to sexy locations. Here, at last, we have something that works and works fast and that we are really capable of producing: air pollution.

I am sure that sulfur emissions must cause a lot of health problems. That's the sort of thing that you worry about when you can afford to. Does this compare with the catastrophic scenarios imagined by Al Gore? If you believe that we are really about to see the oceans rise and swallow every low lying island, force millions of poor around the world to retreat to higher ground, not to mention millions who voted for Gore in 2000, would you really think that a significant decrease in air quality in major urban centers was too high a price to pay to avoid that? Besides, what counts more, our lungs or the planet? Pollution is local. Global warming is, well, global. What's more important, a hacking cough in Beijing or the extinction of the newly Irish polar bears?

If Al Gore were serious he would not only sell six of his houses along with his houseboat; he would raise funds for a sulfur solution. If the New York Times were serious, the paper would have its science correspondents (assuming they can afford more than one) asking whether we have found the solution to anthropogenic global warming. Air pollution is something we can not only produce in large amounts, we can produce it cheaply. We can produce it while generating rapid economic growth. That's not exactly a win-win, but it is a win-win-lose, and that's two out of three.

Of course, none of these folks are serious. They aren't serious enough to stop flying first class. Unfortunately, none of this matters. As Italy now is joining the list of fiscally unstable European states and the U.S. is on track to join them sooner rather than later, we aren't going to be worried much about the environment in the next decade. That's not a projection, it's a prediction.

Mutants, Monsters, & Meth Labs

I am not exactly your go to guy for summer movies. I am your go to guy for horror movies. I have posted a lot on superhero movies. I can recommend X Men: First Class. The blend of Marvel Comics history with real history is delicious. The plot is solid enough for this sort of thing and the action is superb.  

The film excels at two things: casting and scene crafting. James McAvoy as Charles Xavier and Michael Fassbender as Erik Lehnsherr [Magneto] are both very good. The former is nerdy first and a bit sexy. The second is sexy first and a bit nerdy. Kevin Bacon as Sebastian Shaw, well, it's Kevin Bacon.

As for scene crafting, Magneto steals the show. Note to self: don't kill Magneto's mother in front of him, even if "Nazi methods are effective", and don't try to threaten Magneto with a metal knife.

Marvel was very clever in drawing a connection between the mutant/non-mutant antagonism and the civil rights story (along with the Holocaust and other examples of majority/minority oppression). Unfortunately, Marvel barely exploits the most interest aspect of their creation. Unlike actual victims of oppression, the mutants really are different from "the rest of us." They clearly do represent a serious threat to non-mutants. The story would be more interesting if the ambiguity of this situation were better developed and more sympathy were shown for those folks who can't fly or read minds and fear those who can.

In the X Men movies, this matter is represented in the friendship and antagonism between Professor X and Magneto. Magneto sees it as an irreconcilable conflict between us mutants and them. Professor X, quite unintentionally I think, comes off as wishful liberal.

One final note: Fassbender looks silly in Magneto's helmet. Sorry.

Super8 was a lot of fun in spite of itself. File under "deadly alien loose and only the kids know what to do about it." It is a decent nerd fantasy, only slightly marred by a pathetically stupid climax. What goes right here is competent pacing and an unbelievably good job on the part of the young actors: Joel Courtney, Elle Fanning, and Riley Griffiths. Five minutes in I knew exactly what the plot was going to be, and I was still mesmerized. It was the faces. As for the ending let's just say that if the power fails in the theater just as the hero (Courtney) confronts the alien, it would make for a better cinematic experience.

I enjoyed both of the above while I watched them, and thought a little less of X Men and lot less of Super 8 when I thought about them later. Meanwhile I watched a much more powerful and beautiful movie on DVD. Winter's Bone didn't make it to the local theaters, so far as I can remember. It was toe curling fine. File it under Hillbilly Noire. If you watched Justified, which is good for TV, imagine the same thing without the good guys.

Jennifer Lawrence plays Ree Dolly, a sixteen year old Ozark girl trying to pass for seventeen. She has care of three younger siblings and a mother who is heavily medicated. Her dope cooking father has gone missing and if she can't find him or prove he's dead, the bondsman will take their house and land with its hundred year growth trees. The trees are thrown in to get you tree huggers interested. What Ree cares about is her family.

Ree's world is a tangled web of family connections interwoven with meth labs, pot plants, and crooked cops, all of it spread out over a hard landscape of hills, crags, caves, and twisted pine. As soon as she starts looking for dad she is threatened and manhandled. Eventually she is bloodied. But she keeps at it, for what choice does she have? The story tracks to the line between family obligation and murderous business.

Winter's Bone is nearly perfect noire. Ree, like most noire heroes, is an inexplicably good person. She don't take no dope. She won't stop trying to save the few souls who are dependent on her, even when it nearly costs her everything. Actor John Hawks, who is very dear to me as he played Sol Star in Deadwood, plays Ree's uncle, Teardrop. He takes some warming to, but comes around to be as much of a hero as this story can otherwise afford.

Go see X Men and Super 8, for the buttered popcorn. Put Winter's Bone at the top of your Netflix que queue for a more genuine experience.

The Horrendous Jobs Report

There is bad economic news and there is terrible news. The former will contain at least some rays of light, some reason to hope that the worst is over. The latter can at least be spun this way or that, as in: yeah, it's really crap, but hey, not as much crap as some people expected!

And then there is this month's job report. One is almost tempted to employ some Biblical term or maybe invent brand new words. Let horrendous stand for the moment. The uptick in the unemployment rate was the least discouraging news, though it was discouraging enough. From Reuters:

If the labor force, which shrank again, was as big as it was when President Obama took office, the unemployment rate would be north of 11 percent. As it is, the broader U-6 measure [the most inclusive measure of people who want but can't get jobs] surged to 16.2 percent from 15.8 percent.

The really bad news is in the actual job creation numbers. From the Washington Post:

The 18,000 jobs U.S. employers added to their payrolls in June was less than a fifth of what economists had expected and far below the 125,000 or so needed to keep up with an ever-growing population.

This bad news was also retroactive.

Job growth in April and May was revised downward by a combined 44,000 positions. Temporary employers, often a leading indicator of future activity in the labor market, cut 12,000 jobs.

There is no way to spin this to look less than horrendous. The United States has enjoyed the greatest job creation machine in the developed world since WWII, but that appears to have broken down. President Obama is likely to face reelection with the worst jobs record and worst economic recovery since the Great Depression.

The obvious question is what to do about it. One popular theory is that jobs growth can only be restarted by public spending. This view is inspired in large part by an interpretation of economics in the 1940's. According to this view, it was the massive war spending that got us out of the Depression.

There are two problems with this argument, even if the interpretation of the 1940's is right. One is that the government is already spending at WWII levels. Would it really help the economy to increase the debt to 150% or 200% of the GDP? The other problem is that, unlike the U.S. in and after WWII, we now have a structural deficit poised to balloon the debt to unprecedented levels even in the absence of more "stimulus" spending.

I think that this interpretation of post-war economic history is altogether wrong. What got us out of the Depression was millions of Americans returning victorious from war, eager to start families, and believing that they could accomplish anything.

I have no idea how to replicate that. I do have some suggestions. First, we need to examine the costs that the federal and state governments impose on every employer who takes on a new employee. At least we should let employers know what it is. One reason that the health care reform is problematic is that employers can't be sure what those costs will be.

Second, we need to convince the public at large and all those who manage business large or small that their governments can become fiscally responsible. For a half century the Congress and the state legislatures have made promises that they could not possible hope to keep. That has to end. A sense that government is becoming responsible won't energize job creation, but it might at least stabilize it enough that we can start digging out the hole we are in. A good start would be for Congress to pass a budget and a longer term plan for managing the national finance. It would have to be a real budget, and not a ten year plan that puts off all the pain until the eleventh and twelfth years.

I am not at all sure that this is possible or that it would lead to robust job growth. I am pretty sure that there are no other real options. We are in big trouble right now. Not the least of our problems is that a lot of us seem invincibly resistant to reality.

Fiscal Mess 2

Intrepid and cherished readers Bill Fleming and Donald Pays work overtime to make this blog interesting, which is more than I ever did. I plan to double their pay. Meanwhile I will pay them in the coin that I dispense. Bill said this in reply to a recent post:

The country is NOT going belly up, KB. That's just another BS scare tactic. The most horrifying thing is you guys believe your own lies, deep in your hearts. Thus in order to be "right" you will do everything you can to self-fulfill your own Doomsday prophesies. This is true across the board, from the economy, to social, to foreign policy. And you suck people into it like people gathering around a staged train wreck. Why? Because the idea that everything might turn out okay just doesn't sell as well.

I refer Bill to my last post on this topic. Perhaps the CBO's analysis is faulty, and if Bill thinks so he is free to argue the point. If the CBO is right, and this isn't going belly up, I would hate to see what going belly up looks like.

Ps. I would like to see some evidence that the Koch Brothers, or Karl Rove, or Fox News are promoting the meme "Taxation is tyranny".

Donald has this note to my last post:

If Republicans in Congress want to prove they are responsible, raise revenue. Democrats are cutting. The problem is clear---Republicans can't say no to the banksters, Wall Street cheats and mega-corporate elite.

I could note that Donald thinks Obama also is in hock to the "banksters", but that would be uncharitable. I'll focus on the point.

Jay Cost at the Weekly Standard has a defense of the Republican's refusal to raise taxes. Cost provides this chart.

It is dispositive of the argument that taxation can solve the fiscal problem. Even if levels of taxation rise well above the historical norm of 21% to almost a third of the GDP, revenues will never catch up with spending. That's why, in the chart in the previous post, the federal debt continues to grow indefinitely.

Are we going to have to raise taxes? Yes, I certainly think so. However, agreeing to raise taxes in the absence of real entitlement reform gets us the chart above and that is no damn good. If Republicans insist on entitlement reform, what will happen? Cory Heidelberger and Bill and Donald and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama will pound them for trying to kill Medicare. If you don't believe me, ask Paul Ryan.

The Democrats in Congress have agreed to promises of future spending cuts, but only in non-entitlement spending. That just begins the process whereby entitlement spending and interest on the federal debt squeezes out all other spending. Until and unless entitlement reform is really on the table, agreeing to revenue increases just compounds the problem.

The President has acknowledged the need for entitlement reform. What he has not done is to put any concrete proposals on the table. It is his job to provide leadership in this situation. Like that's going to happen.  Wait!

The Fiscal Mess We’re In

Prepare yourself for a shock: I agree with a New York Times editorial.

Congressional Republicans have opened a new front in the deficit wars. In addition to demanding trillions of dollars in spending cuts in exchange for raising the nation's debt limit, they are now vowing not to act without first holding votes in each chamber on a balanced budget amendment to the Constitution.

The Times thinks that the Balanced Budget Amendment is a very bad idea and the Times is right. Writing policy into the Constitution is like changing the rules of baseball so the Cubs will win the series. Congress is a deliberative body and it is damn well going to have to deliberate its way out of the current fiscal mess.

Unfortunately, the Times is in favor of the mess and wants to be certain that it isn't fixed.

What could be more prudent than balancing the books every year? In fact, forcibly balancing the federal budget each year would be like telling families they cannot take out a mortgage or a car loan, or do any other borrowing, no matter how sensible the purchase or how creditworthy they may be.

Right. The power to borrow is one of the great financial powers granted to Congress under the Constitution. Congress needs to be able to respond to circumstances. The analogy works both ways, however. Families have to make sure that their budgets balance over the long run. If they are encouraged, say, by Fannie Mae or Barney Frank to borrow more than their house is worth, that leads to heartbreak and hardship.

The push for a balanced budget amendment is a result of a loss of confidence in Congress. A lot of Americans (and not just the Koch brothers) do not believe that Congress is capable of acting responsibly. They are not being unreasonable. Here is a chart from the Congressional Budget Office.

The "extended-baseline scenario" projects the level of public debt twenty five years into the future based on current law. That includes the expiration of current tax cuts and assumes that all the devices written into current laws in order to make those laws look less expensive will be maintained. The CBO summary isn't written as if the authors think this is realistic.

What is alarming is how alarming the rosy scenario is. It assumes the following:

Revenues would reach 23 percent of GDP by 2035—much higher than has typically been seen in recent decades—and would grow to larger percentages thereafter. At the same time, under this scenario, government spending on everything other than the major mandatory health care programs, Social Security, and interest on federal debt—activities such as national defense and a wide variety of domestic programs—would decline to the lowest percentage of GDP since before World War II.

So, this scenario works if revenues take an unusually large slice of GDP and the major social programs plus interest payments on the debt squeeze all other federal spending to pre-WWII levels. Even then public

debt would increase slowly from its already high levels relative to GDP, as would the required interest payments on that debt. Federal debt held by the public would grow from an estimated 69 percent of GDP this year to 84 percent by 2035 (see Summary Figure 1). With both debt and interest rates rising over time, interest payments, which absorb federal resources that could otherwise be used to pay for government services, would climb to 4 percent of GDP (or one-sixth of federal revenues) by 2035, compared with about 1 percent now.

Federal debt, already historically high, would continue to slowly rise into the foreseeable future. It is very doubtful that this budgetary future is sustainable. I think it also relies on a lot of dubious assumptions. Will the interest rates that foreign investors offer remain low? Will an increase in federal revenues not depress the economic growth on which those revenues depend? But bear in mind: this is the optimistic scenario.

The budget outlook is much bleaker under the alternative fiscal scenario, which incorporates several changes to current law that are widely expected to occur or that would modify some provisions of law that might be difficult to sustain for a long period.

The CBO doesn't really think that Congress is going to exercise the discipline required to make the dismal but preferable scenario happen. See the blue dotted line above. Beyond here be dragons.

This isn't rocket science. We are going to have to raise federal taxes. We are also going to have to reduce the cost of the major entitlement programs. Republicans are resolutely opposed to the former because they do not believe that Democrats will ever agree to the latter. They have good reason to be doubtful.

If you don't like the balanced budget amendment, figure out how to balance the budget. If you don't like the Ryan plan, figure out how to bring entitlement spending under control. If you don't want tax increases, get over it. Any rational solution is going to be worse than the Ryan plan, more tax heavy than Republicans want to swallow, and offensive to the New York Times. Welcome to the future.

E. J. Dionne: Left Wing Archie Bunker

I continue to be astonished at how much the American Left today looks like a parody of conservatives. By the latter, I have in mind especially Archie Bunker. Consider this bit from E. J. Dionne. Speaking about the Republican insistence that spending be cut further before the debt ceiling is raised, Dionne goes on:

This is, well, crazy. It makes sense only if politicians believe -- or have convinced themselves -- that they are fighting over matters of principle so profound that any means to defeat their opponents is defensible.

We are closer to that point than we think, and our friends in the tea party have offered a helpful clue by naming their movement in honor of the 1773 revolt against tea taxes on that momentous night in Boston Harbor.

Whether they intend it or not, their name suggests they believe that the current elected government in Washington is as illegitimate as was a distant, unelected monarchy. It implies something fundamentally wrong with taxes themselves or, at the least, that current levels of taxation (the lowest in decades) are dangerously oppressive. And it hints that methods outside the normal political channels are justified in confronting such oppression.

That last paragraph is stupid and dishonest, though it is not easy to tell the two apart. Calling a protest movement "the Tea Party" implies the very opposite of what Dionne says. The protestors who three boxes of tea into Boston harbor in 1773 did not regard the British government as illegitimate. They thought of themselves a good Englishmen. They regarded the tea tax as illegitimate and engaged in a little political theater to illustrate their point. Okay, there was some property damage, but no one other than Earl Grey was hurt.

Nor did the original Tea Party think that taxes were illegitimate or that the levels of taxation where illegitimate. They thought that the method by which the taxes were passed was illegitimate. The contemporary Tea Party makes a rather more modest point: that the U.S. Government is on the road to fiscal insolvency; that business as usual will bankrupt the nation. Maybe they are right and maybe they are wrong, but they are hardly crazy for thinking so.

E. J. Dionne is a left wing Archie Bunker: pompous and laboring under self-imposed ignorance. He is terrified of change and wants to prevent it at all costs. He is incapable of thinking through his own positions. Most of all, he despises anyone and everyone who criticizes the status quo. The whole point of his argument is to delegitimize protest. It's the sixties all over again. Only the roles have been reversed.

What We Celebrate When We Celebrate the Fourth of July

The United States severed its ties with England on July 2^nd, 1776. We celebrate July 4^th as a national birthday because that is the date at the top of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration announces that we at not Englishmen anymore, which was important at the time. It states what we in fact are, which has been important ever since. It seems like a good moment to revisit that.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

That magnificent first sentence squeezes centuries of political theory, if not a couple millennia, into a handful of phrases. Notice the phrases "in the course of human events," and "among the powers of the earth". The American founding owed a lot to the religious foundations of the culture. A lot of American rhetoric was pronounced from the pulpit. It is from Christianity more than anywhere else that the Founding generation learned the key moral ideas expressed in the Declaration. Nonetheless, the founding was a secular event. It was the result of human deliberation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The second sentence establishes a political logic. All men are, by definition, endowed with inalienable rights. The logic inescapably includes all human beings. Those who want to defend slavery or see women as property or, I might add, other things, are compelled to deny it. This is a basic moral principle. It is operative between two persons on an island.

Next, the Declaration states four basic political principles.

That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Here we have two fundamental principles by which every human government may be judged. If a government fails to protect natural rights, either by ineffectiveness or because of some tyrannical impulse, or if it fails to derive its authority from the consent of the governed, it forfeits its authority. That neatly expresses the idea of liberal democracy.

That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former systems of government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over these states. To prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.

When a government fails the first two tests, the people have the right to replace it with another. We did that in 1776 and again in 1787-89. But it's not a good idea to do it unless you really have to. Revolutions are about as dangerous a business as ever human beings engage in. That is the final principle, the principle of prudence.

Not a bad piece of work, that. It is good to celebrate it at least once a year. Happy Fourth of July!

Gay Marriage Wins in NY & Achieves Nothing

I confess a deep Platonic bias when it comes to interpreting important words. For example, fire can mean the hotness of a habanero pepper, or a surge by a sports team, or dismissing an employ with prejudice. What it really means is the heat, light, smoke, and flames of real combustion. All the other meanings are derivative.

Marriage means the exchange of a promise of sexual access and fidelity on the part of a female for a promise of investment in offspring by the male. Men do not know who their children are. Women do. Yes, I know that tests are now available. That is a recent and as yet rare procedure. An assurance of paternity encourages a male to stick around and support his children. It engenders a sense of responsibility that in turn encourages him to take care of himself. His wife and kids depend on him. The promotion of marriage by religious movements was probably the most successful social reform movement in the history of social reform movements. It encourages the father to do what biology all but compels mom to do: put his family before himself. Maybe that is the Platonic idea expressed by marriage.

Obviously, heterosexual couples marry who do not or cannot have children. Likewise, the institution can logically include homosexual couples. I am in favor of legalizing same sex marriage. To be sure, this extends the institution beyond its essential meaning, but not necessarily beyond its essential purpose. Some partisans of gay marriage believe that it will encourage homosexual men to commit to one another and reduce sexual promiscuity among the male homosexual population. If indeed it has this effect and a man marrying another man thinks that it's no longer just about me it's about us, then one could argue that this is a real marriage.

Unfortunately, there are good reasons to doubt that that the movement for gay marriage will have this result or is intended to have this result. Gay marriage has been pushed as part of gay liberation; but marriage is not liberating, it is confining. It is not at all clear that gay activists are the least bit interested in this. Jason Anthony, writing in the Boston Review, identifies the real motive behind the movement for gay marriage.

Gay marriage may cause the greatest quake in the history of Judeo-Christian religion since the Protestant Reformation. A straightforward reading of Leviticus and Romans shows that a government siding with same-sex partnerships is a gauntlet thrown down to the Judeo-Christian tradition. A line in the sand has been crossed.

That, more than anything, is what the political movement is about. There is nothing unusual or even inappropriate about that. Political passions may serve good purposes but they are almost always focused against enemies.

Anthony is worried, however, that the success of the gay marriage movement might put some psychological pressure on gays to actually change their behavior.

What about the many other blessed varieties of human love to which, during our forty years in the wilderness, we gays and lesbians gave birth? Is having a boyfriend suddenly not good enough? Is sharing an apartment, a dog, and utilities suddenly second-class?

He provides a very useful set of links to expressions of a similar anxiety. Hilton Als writes in the New Yorker:

I suppose if gay men and women are to have anything approaching the kind of love we've known—a love that can't be marginalized, despite the status quo's best intentions, a love that enlightens and hurts and informs and brutalizes and educates and comforts because it's different—we'll have to do away with words and ceremonies that have never belonged to us.

Mark Greif lays it on the table:

The goal of gay marriage, in the pro-marriage position, has to include indifference to marriage as an institution. Marriage must remain abstract—it hardly matters if anyone does it once the original blush is off and the initial rush abates.

Here is marriage: The division of humanity into closed couples, when modernity has given us a chance at something much better—affiliation by manifold currents of love, interest, and likeness which overflow the monogamous male-female dyad.

I think that means that the whole point of the gay agenda is not to legalize gay marriage but to destroy marriage altogether.

Katherine M. Franke, professor of law and the director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law at Columbia Law School, has this:

Of course, lots of same-sex couples will want to marry as soon as they are allowed to, and we will congratulate them when they do even if we ourselves choose not to. But we shouldn't be forced to marry to keep the benefits we now have, to earn and keep the respect of our friends and family, and to be seen as good citizens.

Let's review. The chief purpose of the gay marriage movement is to give a black eye to the Judeo-Christian tradition. Gay men and women aren't really interested in marriage. They need their own institutions. The pro-gay-marriage position isn't pro-marriage; it has to be indifferent to marriage. Last, but not least, gay couples who do not choose to marry should get the same respect and legal rights as those who do marry. At that point I have to ask: whatever could be the point of legalizing gay marriage?

It would appear that many voices in the pro-gay-marriage movement are as hostile to gay marriage as any fundamentalist. I find myself in the queer position of being more in favor of gay marriage than many of the queers.

I am in favor of gay marriage precisely because I do not think that having a boyfriend, sharing an apartment and a dog and utilities is good enough. If marriage means anything, it means that. It means that it's not about me it's about us, and us is for the long haul. If the movement for gay marriage had taken marriage seriously, if it had recognized that not about goodies to be won but obligations to be shouldered, if it had been about responsibility rather than retribution, then we might be at a turning moment.

As it is, the legalization of gay marriage in the United States is likely to achieve absolutely nothing.