Vote 1 Non-delusional

I really thought that if Mitt Romney won the Republican nomination, I'd be able to vote for some third party, secure in the knowledge that it didn't really matter which moderate Republican got in. I thought that would mean the Republicans had decided not to double down on the crazy. I was wrong.

Watching the nomination fight, it was pretty obvious that Romney decided - probably correctly - that he couldn't win without pretending to be just as crazy himself. You only have to look at the opinion polls, with one crazy challenger after another spiking in the polls, getting enough attention to show off their crazy side, and dropping back down as the Republicans went looking for somebody electable who wasn't Mitt.

Back in 2000, running on a platform of tax cuts for the rich, rolling back bank regulations, increasing defence spending and invading a Middle Eastern country might have seemed vaguely plausible. Wrong, but plausible. Twelve years later, we have run that particular experiment and we have seen the results. Doing it again would not be wrong; it would be delusional. I would be derelict in my duty as a voter to allow it to be tried again.

There is still a risk that the Republican party will conclude from a Romney loss that they have been too moderate and reasonable. Romney has substantially mitigated that risk both by the arguments he has chosen to use and his VP pick. It's my hope that Ryan carries with him enough Tea Party credibility that they will not be able to pretend that moderation was the problem.

I suspect that Mitt Romney really is the kind of moderate I was hoping for. Not the guy I want running the country, but enough of a reasonable politician that he would be no worse than Obama. His record as Massachusetts governor suggests that. Unfortunately the Republicans don't trust him, or don't like him, enough to let him run that way. He has to continually take up stupidly extreme positions to keep them on side; and he has made his choice to go that way, and to be running in a party that requires it.

I think the reason Jon Huntsman never got one of those not-Romney poll bounces is because he wasn't prepared to do that. He earns respect, and now I am hoping that this election is enough of a slap in the face to the Republicans that they will turn to someone like him in 2016. I think the best thing that could happen to this country is for the Republicans to get crushed this year; mere reality has not proven enough of a wakeup call.

My consolation is that Obama appears to be a better choice than the moderate version of Romney would have been. Romney appears to be stuck in the 1980's on foreign policy - seriously, Russia is the USA's biggest strategic threat? - and foreign policy is going to be critical to the future of the US.

I just wish I had an election where I could vote against Obama with some hope that my vote would improve things or just not make them much worse...

Showing you care

Another day, another riot by Muslims. I realize that "one million Muslims riot" is a great headline; and "999 million Muslims spend their day peacefully" is not. And it is difficult for me to assess which of these two headlines is more accurate, since I don't actually live in a Muslim country. So I have a suggestion.

I would like to see an Islamic charity, which responds to perceived acts of sacrilege or blasphemy. Every member (which I would hope becomes a substantial fraction of all Muslims) donates some amount each time there is such an incident - cartoons, burning of a Koran, offensive videos, whatever. The amount could be quite small; it could depend on income and circumstances; but it should be every time this happens. Those who feel particularly incensed could work the day in a green cap or headscarf, say, and donate their day's pay to the charity. Instead of spending it burning buildings and killing people.

The response to a specific incident could be as simple as printing more Korans, to ensure the number never decreases; issuing press releases condemning the insults; organizing peaceful mass actions - imagine a few million letters sent to a newspaper explaining why their cartoons are offensive (not that this latest one needed much explanation as far as I know). What it should not include is calls for violence.

All of this would be pretty cheap to run. There would be a lot of money left over. This is the point; the extra money could be used to build schools and hospitals in the poorest and most neglected parts of the Islamic world (or anywhere that would get press coverage, frankly).

The benefits of this are manifold:

• People not being killed. Especially innocent people who had nothing to do with whatever the original insult was.
• Buildings not being burnt down.
• Much-needed infrastructure being built for the poorest of the world.
• A great moral example, pressuring the violent to instead channel their anger into work.
• An example to point at for the rest of the world, that most Muslims are not howling fanatical thugs, but ordinary people who would just like a little respect.
• Earning that respect.

The greater the contributions, and the more they are actually used for good works, the bigger the signal that Islam really is a religion of peace and its adherents are deeply offended by whatever it was.

Imagine that next time some idiot pastor decides to burn a Koran, the Muslim world replies that it is deeply offended and is working off its righteous anger by building a hospital. How embarrassing for the pastor; that the best he can think of to do is burn books when his targets are helping the desperate. What a permanent rebuke to him - a hospital for the needy.

I said I don't live in a Muslim country. I don't want to, either. I don't feel that it would be safe - for all that far more people are killed in traffic accidents in my city than get killed by mobs worldwide. Traffic accidents are a steady background, but mobs grow exponentially. A Muslim world that collectively announced in such a public and sincere way that it was peaceful would raise my opinion of it greatly. At the moment the view I have of them is summed up by Sam Harris - "We're a peaceful religion and we'll kill anyone who says we aren't". It may be inaccurate, but all I know is what I read.

Indeed, my reading of the Koran is that Mohamed would have greatly approved of this charity, although I am well aware that some parts of it suggest he would have engaged in both the charity and the violence - the translation I read contained the phrase "make wide slaughter" far too often for comfort.

At the moment the hot-heads on both sides are feeding on this stuff. Some troll in the west publishes anti-Muslim propaganda and decries Islam as violent and thuggish. And some shock-jock in the Islamic world uses it to whip up a frenzy, resulting in riots. The troll points to the riots; the shock-jock points to the propaganda; the uncivilized win, and the rest of us lose.
It would be wonderful if "the rest of us" could push them into the margins where they can wither for lack of attention.

Advice to the Bullied

This should really be taken with a pinch of salt, because I didn't get seriously bullied at school. A few individuals made a hobby out of trying to make my life miserable, but none of them had the kind of broad access to my life that you need to really do that. That said, I think the below is still true.

1: Just ignore them. This is the advice everyone gives, and there's something to it. The bully wants to show off how powerful they are, and the less they can make you miserable, the less they are going to get out of it. If their taunts and mockery are just ignored, they'll likely go away. Even if they don't, who cares? But you can't make real use of this advice without the next point.

2: Ignoring abuse is really, really hard. This is what hardly anyone will tell you. There's a word for people who don't care what others think of them, and that word is "sociopath". Adults often forget what bullying is like; in hindsight it doesn't seem so bad, because it's over, their tormentors are gone from their lives, and they have much more freedom to deal with hateful people. And the person bullying *you* is probably not important to *them*. That doesn't mean you have to be a sociopath to ignore a bully, but it does mean it will take a lot of hard work.

Of course, if the bully is using physical violence, point 1 is much less relevant, and point 2 is even more so. Which brings me to:

3: Fight back. This does not mean hitting the bully; often they will be bigger than you, or else more prepared to risk using violence. There's no reason why you should fight your battles on their chosen ground - they probably chose it because they perceived an advantage there. If you get in a fight and are both punished, it may be that you care deeply about the effect on your record, and they don't. Here you will need to make very careful judgements about consequences of actions. But the chances are that the misery they are inflicting on you is much greater than the benefit they get from it. It is often surprising just how little pain you need to inflict in return to make them stop. Most importantly -

4: Despite what the bully will tell you, they are the one that's in the wrong, and you are perfectly entitled to get authority involved. No, this doesn't make you a cheat or a coward. If they will be embarrassed by having their actions widely known, that's something they should be reflecting on. Mobile phones these days have magnificent recording ability. Sometimes you will find that those in authority ignore you (see point 2) or even share whatever prejudice your bully does. You are still entitled to be left alone and not bullied. Don't be fooled into fighting on their turf.

5: It gets better. All kinds of things are done by schoolchildren that would be considered assault in the adult world. The older you get, the more options you will have for redress or simple avoidance. You may still get bullied as an adult (sadly), but your ability to declare it intolerable and move away is much more absolute. Things and people that seem all-consumingly important now will fade with time - this is one reason why you get offered point 1 as advice.

6: Learn. The purpose of childhood in humans is not merely to eat and get bigger; otherwise it would be one long growth spurt, as it is in many other animals. Watch the people around you, and how they react. Some rare people will step in to help the bullied; others will do so for friends; some will offer sympathy but not help; and a few will join in. Nor are these categories absolute, or unchanging. Understand who you are dealing with, and who is worth knowing. Experiment. If you leave school knowing nothing more than how to defang a bully you will still have done well. You will make mistakes, but the same is true for everything you do in childhood.

7: Success is the best revenge. Take comfort in getting on with your life, and accomplishing what you need to do. Get the grades you need for your chosen career, or the experience you need for a better job somewhere else. It may also make it easier to get authority involved - if the bully is stopping you from getting your assigned work done, escalation will be easier.

But if you take away nothing else from this, remember point 2: being bullied is hard work. Advice that begins with "Just..." is unlikely to help.

Atheism and Feminism

Over at BlagHag, Jen McCreight remarks that she has attracted considerable abuse for championing feminism within the atheist movement, and expresses the hope that such miscreants can be sidelined or even left behind.

I have not really been following all the fuss around this. My only real contact with it is the occasional rant from PZ on Pharyngula - which I'm aware is always from his point of view. I don't go to the conferences and I'm not likely to; even if I did, I'm a Privileged White Male and somewhat introverted, so the chances of my being affected either way by sexual harrassment policies are pretty slim (and that's what the Privilege is: not to do as you please, but the freedom from worry about what others will do). I will say that I have found over the years that place that are welcoming to women are generally much more pleasant to be in.

Whenever I hear of such controversies I am reminded of Rebecca West's comment on feminism: "I myself have never been able to find out what feminism is; I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat or a prostitute.". Women deserve the freedom to be neither of those things.

I'm not an atheist out of any sense of rebellion or superiority; I just consider it a much more justifiable position to take than any of the religions I've heard of. I regard atheism in a pure sense as quite orthogonal to a lot of other considerations, including feminism. There's no reason you can't be a stupid atheist, or a conformist atheist, and there are plenty of examples of both out there.

But when it comes to some kind of Atheist movement, the picture changes. The point of such a thing is to oppose the depredations of the various religions. I don't consider myself an a-stamp-collector-ist, because the stamp collecting movement doesn't make any attempt to impose itself on me. So an Atheist movement will naturally be drawn to the issues that are raised by organized religion, and to oppose the damage that they do. The best leverage available is to find issues where the Churches are on the wrong side of history, and highlight them - it reduces the undeserved deference given to religious views, and hopefully leads to less inteference from them. It forces them to change or go under, and either is an improvement.

One of the broad themes of the evils of religion is the oppression of women. Access to reproductive health care, the right to marry whom they choose and divorce those who turn out to be unsuitable, the right to education and work, the vote... all of these things are great steps forward for women, all opposed by religious organizations. Some, to their credit, have supported them (or at least acquiesced afterwards), but many oppose them still. So feminist issues are an obvious fit for an Atheist movement.

But I don't support women's rights just because I am an atheist and religions oppose them. I support women's rights because I think they are an integral part of the kind of civilized society I would like to see humanity build. A look at history and comparison of countries around the world will show that taking account of women's interests leads to a more prosperous, peaceful country. And in any case, why should women not be free to pursue their lives as they see fit, just like everyone else?

So in this I am entirely on Jen's side. By championing the right, the Atheist movement can make itself a respected part of society, and cement religious freedom for future generations. There is no downside. I may not agree with everything that results, but I am very confident it will be better than what is now and much better than what has been.

(Note: I see that I am already behind the curve: while I am commenting on her post, her idea has already taken off.).

Dangerous People

With the terrible events in Aurora comes another crop of preachers telling us that this is all because God has been ejected from public life. Others have pointed out that this portrays God as a petulant bully with poor aim; I want to examine the motivation behind such statements.

I have previously argued that a key component of morality is to assess who it is safe to have living near you. What these people are attempting to do is apply this test to those who do not follow their faith. "If you let these people live among you", they are saying, "then God will smite you". Atheists and muslims and secularists and no doubt Catholics and Mormons and any other denominations they don't like, are all dangerous people to be near.

Not that they want to come out and say that; instead, they complain that we have removed God from the public arena. That's right: unless everyone is required to worship their God, their way, he's going to throw a tantrum. Of course, everyone else will rightly object to that, for a variety of reasons. In many cases, because they think God will punish them for worshipping the wrong way; and in some cases because they think God will punish them for not making everyone else do it their way. And this is how religious wars start.

Once upon a time droughts and plagues and other disasters would result in a search for witches and heretics, and persecution for various minorities. We still have these instincts, but they are growing weaker - all we have seen so far is press releases. It is my hope that in the future such ridiculous claims will serve only to discredit their makers, as they should.

Already Rick Warren has disclaimed any such intent in his tweeting. Whether or not you believe that he never intended it, the important thing is that he saw it as a good idea to reject it. The side of reason is winning.

Ignoring the ten commandments

Listening to a program on homeschooling the other day, I heard yet again the claim that our law is "based on the ten commandments". This is quite wrong, and I thought it was worth writing down just how wrong it is.

In researching* this post I rediscovered that there isn't exactly a "ten commandments"; there are a collection of statements which different traditions break up into ten along different lines. But here's the text, with annotations by me:

> I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage.
This has never been relevant to our law.

> Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
Such a law is directly forbidden as an establishment of religion.

> Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth:
This has never been forbidden, and the country is full of graven images.

> Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them:
This would also contradict the establishment clause. One of the more hilarious examples of public piety that I've seen in recent years was this. Apparently these people haven't read the book. But they weren't breaking the law.

> for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me;
We go to some trouble to reduce the extent that the sins of the parents are visited on the children, never mind succeeding generations. We certainly do not deliberately punish people for their parent's sins.

>And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me, and keep my commandments.
The establishment clause specifically forbids different treatment for those that love God, and as we will see his commandments are generally ignored or contradicted by our law. We do treat people better who follow the law, although I would question the use of the term "mercy" with people that are following the law.

> Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
We have had such laws in the past, but they've been found to be unconstitutional.

> Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates:
Sunday trading laws are still widespread, although it's difficult to distentangle them from a widespread desire for a weekend. It's worth noting that the sabbath day is actually Saturday. Doing work on your own behalf is not prohibited anywhere that I know of; whereas the Old Testament notoriously prescribes the death penalty for this.

> For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it.
This can't be used as a justification, as it violates the establishment clause.

> Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
Parents typically have legal authority over children until a specific age, although "honour" is not required. Legally, parents have much more responsibility to their children than vice-versa, something not mentioned here at all. The Old Testament expands more on what this should mean in Deuteronomy chapter 20: apparently disobedient children can be put to death. We have nothing like this law on the books.

> Thou shalt not kill.
Is there a legal system that doesn't include this?

> Thou shalt not commit adultery.
Has been a crime in the past, but is now merely a cause for divorce.

> Thou shalt not steal.
Is there a legal system that doesn't include this? Variations here are usually over the definition of "stealing", and depend on who does it. Anyone who wishes to pronounce the US free of such controversies should look into asset forfeiture laws in the US; begin here.

> Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.
I must confess to some ignorance here; I don't know how widespread such an idea is in other legal systems. Lying to authorities about things they care about is often punished quite harshly, but this passage refers to "thy neighbour" - a much more personal idea. Most of the time when I hear this passage brought up it is not by Christians - they seem much more enamored of Biblical passages dealing with sexual morality - but by people pointing out to Creationists that lying is not well thought of by the religion they are claiming to defend.

> Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour's.
You could make a decent argument that the entire free enterprise system is based on encouraging people to break this commandment. Our legal system certainly prohibits underhanded ways of acting on such desires, but there is absolutely no prohibition on the desire itself. It might be taken as good advice, but our economic system is the embodiment of a rejection of it.

So there you have it. A couple of rules - against theft and murder - that are shared with every other legal system on the planet; one that might be original to the ten commandments, at least in its spirit; and the rest either irrelevant or specifically rejected by our legal system.

No, our legal system is not based on the ten commandments. Thankfully.

* OK, looking it up on Wikipedia.

Experience is a great teacher

A couple of times in the last year I've seen letters in my local papers to the effect of "We were warned about acid rain, nuclear winter, Y2K, a new ice age, the ozone hole, food shortages and all the rest. None of it happened, so why should we believe in the global warming advocates?"


Aside: I've been trying recently to be less sarcastic when arguing with people, especially creationists. But I cannot resist observing that it would explain a lot about climate "skeptics" if they really do live on another planet, where there was a nuclear war last century and no nuclear winter. And yes, both the letters included that example - which is partly what drew them to my attention.


Things like acid rain, or the ozone hole, are relatively quick and easy to fix. We spent the money to get rid of CFCs, it was not especially expensive, and already the hole is closing up. We cleaned up industrial pollution, and the acid rain cleared up. The low cost of action, and the potentially high cost of inaction, meant they got fixed before they got genuinely serious, and so people can forget what might have happened and claim that it was a big fuss about nothing.


Global warming is different. Huge amounts of economic growth have been based on fossil fuels; even more is expected. Fossil fuel usage permeates the economy, and substitutes are genuinely difficult to find. Changeovers will be expensive both initially and in ongoing costs. The effects of the problem are slow and subtle, and a lot of people think they can just move out of the way if there's a problem... at least, a lot of the rich people who are generating most of the carbon dioxide think that.


A few years ago I thought we were really going to do something early and proportionate - even George Bush was publically saying action was needed, and his party (which has many of the skeptics politically attached to it) had been turfed out. But time has been wasted, and the US particularly has focused on looking harder for fossil fuels; there are stories now about US energy independence, and this is not by switching to solar.


So even if the world gets together and takes serious action, it won't be the kind that results in people writing letters to the paper 50 years from now saying "we were told the planet was getting warmer and we spent all this money and nothing happened - why should we spend money on asteroid defence?" The best I am hoping for now is that we limit the temperature rise to a few degrees, and avoid setting off any of the really big positive feedback loops. And it will not happen until the temperature rise really starts to bite.


This is unfortunate; people will die, species will become extinct, landscapes we enjoy will vanish, enormous amounts of money will be spent on mitigation. But it's also a good thing.


Humans as a species are now so numerous and technolologically capable that we really can make serious differences to the world we live in. We've done it before on a local scale, chopping down forests and introducing new species, but always there has been somewhere else to go afterwards (even if its inhabitants reject the refugees). Now that we can alter the entire planet there is nowhere to move on to and no other society that remains unaffected. We have to grow up and take responsibility for what we do and how we do it.


Global warming will not destroy life on earth or even endanger humanity. We could lose a few billion people and not be seriously threatened - this happens to other species all the time. What it will destroy is the illusion that everything will be taken care of by God or Mother Nature or Destiny or Technology or something. It will become part of the historical record that something we did, that many people didn't even believe could make a difference, resulted in serious long term environmental change - and that it could have been a whole lot more extreme if we hadn't changed our ways.


That's a valuable thing. Better we learn that one with global warming than nuclear winter, and you can be sure there will be more of these challenges in our future.

Risk vs Reward

The Republican primaries this year are fascinating for the range of potential outcomes they provide. There is great risk and great reward to be had. And so I am finding that I agree with Andrew Sullivan - I want them to nominate Rick Santorum, for all that I helped boot him out of Pennsylvania six years ago and I like him even less now.
If Romney gets the nomination and wins, Republicans will decide that they are doing the right thing. After all, the post-war pattern has largely been two terms Democrat, two terms Republican. If they can get back into office only one term after inflicting George W Bush on the country, they must be doing OK.If he loses, on the other hand, they will likely decide that their problem is that they have been insufficiently extreme - they put up a reasonable candidate, and he was rejected. They will therefore move further to the right, and US politics will become even less sane.
A Romney nomination, therefore, carries no upside. The best that can be hoped for from it is that if he wins he proves to be less disastrous than George W Bush - a low bar, and still a difficult one for someone of his apparent pliability in a party that has learned nothing since.
If Santorum gets the nomination and wins, the US is in for a horror run - starting with a likely attack on Iran, and all the destructive effects that will have on the world. And continuing at home with the influence of a man who would like to ban contraception; a ban that would lead in the long term to a miserable, overpopulated world, except that most people would ignore it just as most Catholics ignore the Pope on this.
If Santorum loses, however, it would be a welcome wakeup call to the Republican party. One might dare to hope that they will move towards the center, and away from their current combination of private plutocracy and public theocracy. This is the party that abolished slavery in the US and paid the price for a century in the South; it is easy to forget that with their current destructive and divisive positions and politics.
There is great risk in Santorum getting the nomination - he might win. I would like to think that he can't, but this is the same country that elected George W Bush not once but twice. But there is also great reward; if the Republicans were to get an infusion of the reality-based, they could become a great deal saner.
I'd hesitate to actually vote for him in a primary - I do not want even a tiny part of the responsibility of electing him - but part of me still keeps hoping Santorum will win the nomination. The Republican party - and with it the US - simply cannot keep sleepwalking towards its current cliff.
... and yes, I have continued the internet tradition of redefining the word Santorum. Think of it as a well-deserved expression of disgust.