To its credit, the Obama Administration is putting together policies aimed at reducing abortions. The current plan is to package together contraception with aid to pregnant women. Since they consider contraception immoral, Catholic bishops and Baptist ministers are trying to get the two proposals separated so that they can support the aid to pregnant women.
It’s precisely because of stances like this that it’s very hard to take the “abortion is murder” crowd seriously when they say abortion is murder. Their revealed behavior indicates that they don’t actually find abortion especially problematic, but just place it on a spectrum containing a general aversion to women controlling their own sexuality
– excerpt from linked article –
Atrios sees this as a reason to mock those who advocate seeking “common ground” with abortion proponents. I think we’re arguably seeing here the real fruits of seeking common ground in good faith—their real views are smoked out.
Each post gave way to long a long common thread devoted primarily to trashing pro-lifers.
Now, I know Yglesias at least is smarter than this. It seems difficult for me to believe that he could have shared an office for a year with Ross Douthat and emerged wit such a simplistic view of the pro-life position.
Yet, he is happy to comfort his readers’ prejudices that pro-lifers are nothing but a bunch of hypocrites who really just hate women. And on what basis? Because they are trying to influence an abortion reduction bill so that it emphasizes means they do not consider immoral.
Conor Friesendorf has been looking at unhelpful discourse. I nominate this series of posts. They will not convince anyone; the only thing they will do is back up people who don’t like pro-lifers.
I just read the verdict of 150 years for Bernard Madoff and all I can really think is “Why is it that someone who set up a Ponzi scheme gets more jail time than the majority of murderers?” I realize that many people were involved and yes, I would be angry if someone cheated me out of my life’s savings (though I would not give only one person all of my money to invest but that is beside the point). Is Madoff just a symbol of Wall Street greed, which in today’s society is worse than murder to so many? Is it because the people feel they trusted him and were ripped off and therefore justify any horrible thing they can think of to happen to him? Can anyone explain to me how what Madoff did is worse than murder?
Of course, someone could post “A Few Questions About Tom Hanks:”
I just read where Tom Hanks was paid $40 million for starring in Angels & Demons, and all I can really think is “Why is it that someone who acts in a bad movie gets paid several times more than soldiers, cops, teachers, firemen, nurses, and doctors? I realize that Hanks is a popular actor, and if I had spent years working on a movie that called for a middle-aged white male lead, I’d want Hanks (though I would not devote years to my life to silly Hollywood entertainment, but that’s beside the point). Is Hanks just a symbol of Hollywood glamour, which in today’s society is more celebrated than actual heroism? Is it because they enjoyed Hanks’s previous movies so much that they feel he is justified is high salary? Can anyone explain to me how what Hanks does is many times more valuable than what a soldier, cop, teacher, nurse, or doctor does?
If you prefer, you can substute in your favorite singer, CEO, or athlete for Hanks — I’m not trying to pick on him in particular. And I also understand that there are economic reasons why someone like Tom Hanks would be paid so much. But those reasons are similar to the reaons why Bernie Madoff would be given a harsh sentence.
One could also play this game with the prices of consumer goods — I’ll leave it to my readers to come up with examples, but suffice it to say that the prices of consumer goods is not always perfectly correlated with the value they bring to society.
In any instance, I think it’s interesting that even a free-market Obama’s-policies-are-gonna-bring-a-horde-o-locusts-oer-the-land type like Dr. Helen has a much higher standard for the results the government delivers than what the market delivers. It may be the case that the difference between a murderer’s sentencing and Madoff’s sentencing is out of line with the difference between the severity of their crimes. But if so, that pales in comparison to how out of line the difference between a soldier’s compensation and Tom Hanks’s compensation is with their contributions to society.
Yet, people like Dr. Helen are apparently OK with the market delivering outcomes that seem on their face to be out of whack, but not the government. This suggests to me a greater faith in government than in markets.
In a recent bloggingheads diavlog, David Frum expresses notes the level of resentment in conservative talk radio:
Maybe part of the explanation can be found in passages like this:
Oh, I see, the while middle class has just stubbornly refused to upgrade its skills. I wonder why that is…
Ah, so if the critical thing is whether one graduates high school on time, then the story really isn’t that adults are stupidly failing to respond to economic incentives, but that 16 and 17 year olds are dropping out of high school. Most likely because they do not have the social capital in their families to support them doing so. (I should note that Frum here is speaking about Hispanic immigrants, but the same would apply generally).
But, in perhaps the most offensive passage, Lindsey blame social conservatism for the plight of the unskilled worker:
First of all, I seriously challenge the notion that one can make more in real wages (and other compensation) as a hotel desk clerk today than as a UAW worker on the assembly line at any point in the history of the auto industry.
Secondly, maybe it’s because I grew up in the blue-state northeast, but would call myself a social conservative, yet my idea of “being a man” includes doing whatever it takes to provide for one’s family. And if that meant kissing the rear end of someone I didn’t think deserved it, then that’s what needs to be done. I also thought “being a good team player” was very much a part of how men have been socialized throughout our history in competitive sports.
Thirdly, while hostility between labor and management is likely part of the blue-collar culture, I don’t see that it is this all-encompassing disposition that would render one incapable of being polite when the situation calls for it.
All in all, I am sympathetic to people like Frum and Lindsey, if the alternative is talk show umbrage taking from the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin.
But what I hear them saying to those with economic resentment is, “If only you would invest in yourself and go to college, then you would have enjoyed the economic boom. But you’re stuck in your outmoded views of what it means to be a man and not improving yourself, so you shouldn’t expect much better than what you’ve got.”
There’s probably some truth in that vision, but it’s not the whole story. Yes, some people have done very well in the last few years, and most of them were college-educated. But I think that’s more of a correlation than a causation.
First of all, people who are smarter tend to go to college, and people who are smarter will be better able to to take advantage of globalisms opportunities than those who aren’t so smart. Not simply because they have an education or piece of paper in their hand, but also because they have the mental agility and entrepreneurial spirit and a family safety net to take risks.
Secondly, I don’t think the story is that those with education were winners and those without are losers. There have been a few extreme winners that pull the averages up. Some were winners because of their own hard work and self-investment; others frankly got lucky. I think most college educated people are still not getting ahead, but treading water. So I think it would be wrong to tell frustrated blue-collar workers that if only they would educate themselves, they could play too. Most college educated people aren’t playing either.
That doesn’t mean that the right thing to do is to indulge and stoke resentment as the conservative talk show hosts do. But conservatism has to have something better to say to folks who are currently losing than, “Go to school.”
Scott Boras wonders what Stephen Strasburg would do, if he had been born in Tibet. Well, that’s a cute little rhetorical trick, but if Strasburg had been born in Tibet he probably wouldn’t throw 101 miles an hour and he probably wouldn’t have become a future multimillionaire while pitching for San Diego State.
I’m sorry, but I simply don’t have any tears to spare for a young man who’s soon going to be worth $15 million instead of the $50 million he so obviously deserves.
Of course, Strasburg “deserves” $50 million because, to paraphrase Crash Davis, God put a thunderbolt in his right arm, and he was born in a time and place where being able to throw a baseball 100 miles and hour is richly rewarded. I’m sure Strasburg works at his conditioning, and will need to continue to do so as a professional baseball player, but there’s lots of guys who work hard and aren’t about to sign eight figure contracts.
Boras’s wistful musings about if Strasburg were raised in a poor repressed region throws this into relief. Even before he signs his first contract, Strasburg is already on the long tail of privilege distribution among people born in the world. What is at stake is how many nines are in the percentage of people Strasburg is more fortunate than. And yeah, I’ve got more pressing concerns than whether that thunderbolt should make Strasburg rich or super-rich.
But I don’t blame Strasburg or Boras (OK, I blame Boras a little). They’re doing what they’re supposed to. And the same is true for all of us who are sitting in America reading this on a computer. The things that irritate us and that we fight for and feel hurt over are the differnence between being in the 98th and 99th percentile of material comfort.
It can seem absurd to us that Stephen Strasburg is aggrieved that he will get a contract for low eight figures instead of mid eight figures before he does a thing for a professional team. But probably no more absurd than our grievance would look to those who came before us, or to those in less fortunate parts of the world.
What three-point shooting does is increase the variance in outcomes for an offensive possession, and, therefore, increase the probablility that the otherwise inferior team will win, especially when coupled with lowering the sample size. The explected point value of a 50% 2-point shooter and a 33% three-point shooter is the same, but the three-point shooter has a much higher upside on a hot shooting night.
Think about it this way — your best chance of coming out ahead in a casino is to place a small number of large long-odds bets. As the number of bets gets larger, the chances of overcoming the house edge become smaller. You’re more likely to come out ahead betting on a single number a handfule of times than on betting red or black over and over.
And thus we have the Orlando Magic, who usually play four three-point shooters and Dwight Howard.
Does this make for an exciting game? I’m inclined to think not. If the Magic are hitting their shots, as they did in the Cleveland series, they win. If they aren’t then, they won’t. There’s not much strategy to it; it’s basically a gamble on whether it’s a good shooting night or a bad shooting night.
Yes, they need to play defense on their end, and there are things the other team can do to thwart this strategy, but the result of the game pretty much comes down to whether the threes are falling. It seems odd to complain about a basketball game being determined by whether a team can make baskets, but it’s not that interesting.
Granted, the pre-empted network programming in question was “I’m a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here,” but you did show it the previous three nights, including the two hour premiere? Did you think people would be interested in the first three nights, and then not care on the night of the eliminations? Really?
Have you considered that you might not be so desperate for money if you didn’t produce so may commercials congratulating yourself for tremendous journalistic feats like covering the vice presidential debate that happened right on your doorstep and was announced months in advance? Or shoving the Race for the Cure down all our throats?
Or maybe you could do something about how you can’t seem to manage commercials from popping in the middle of programming, or transitioning back from commercials to the program?
I have a few questions if this is going to be the basis for future policymaking:
Is there a carrot that goes with the stick? Studies have shown that positive reinforcement of good behavior is much more effective than negative consequences for poor behavior. This was the first significant example of pro-life violence in a number of years; I don’t recall anyone proposing that the pro-life movement should have been rewarded with policy concessions. Will these punitive policies sunset if there is no violence from anti-abortion groups for a certain period of time?
There are extreme and moderate parts of every movement. The punitive policies would effect both groups, as well as those on whose behalf they advocate. Is this really fair?
How far are you willing to go? I suspect Hillzoy would favor this set of policies even in the absence of pro-life violence. But what if there’s another act of violence? Would we impose punitive policies, even if the consensus was that, other than the punitive effect, they do not serve the common good? For example, if an environmental group committed some act of violence, would we cut off our nose to spite our face and pass pollution-friendly policies that might hasten ecological doom in order to demonstrate that terrorism does not work? Should we launch a war in response to the killings at an army recruiting station?
There are some “winners” from these punitive policies. Would this not create an incentive for them to “stage” acts of terrorism in order to trigger the punitive policies?
Is there a historical precedent for such punitive policies being effective in making groups less violent?
An argument seems to be developing along these lines:
Pro-lifers call abortion murder, and use other extreme language in describing abortion, such as comparing it to the Holocaust and slavery
Pro-lifers strongly condemned the murder of Dr. Tiller.
1 and 2 are inconsistent. Either pro-lifers do not really believe that abortion is an evil on the scale they claim it to be, or their condemnations of Tiller’s murder are less than sincere.
First, I think there is a kernel of truth to this argument. I do think that pro-lifers occasionally let their rhetoric get ahead of their actual feelings, and I also think that many of the condemnations of Tiller’s murder were motivated more by political necessity than genuine outrage.
Nevertheless, the argument laid out above is not sound. For one, someone committed to the principle of nonviolence could believe that abortion is a great evil, even the greatest of evils, and still not believe that violence is an apt response. This is generally rejected because many pro-lifers vote Republicans, and Republicans couldn’t possibly embrace non-violence, although it is theoretically possible.
I don’t think one needs to completely embrace pacificsm in order to avoid an inconsistency. In this thread, Cathleen Kaveny argued that a war in the US over abortion would not be justifiable by Just War Theory. And I agree. But the conclusion seems to be that since it is not, then abortion should not be considered a grave evil. I disagree with this. To understand why, let’s look at the requirements for a Just War:
The strict conditions for legitimate defense by military force require rigorous consideration. The gravity of such a decision makes it subject to rigorous conditions of moral legitimacy. At one and the same time:
the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain;
all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective;
there must be serious prospects of success;
the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily in evaluating this condition.
These are the traditional elements enumerated in what is called the “just war” doctrine. The evaluation of these conditions for moral legitimacy belongs to the prudential judgment of those who have responsibility for the common good.
A war based on abortion would, in my opinion, fail on the second third, and fourth criteria. It would also fail because it is not clear who has “responsibility for the common good” and be in a position to make a “prudential judgment.”
It’s important to note that the abortion’s failure on these criteria says almost nothing about the gravity or scale of the evil of abortion. The only criterion that touches on this is the fourth one, and that is a questionable judgement call on my part, and motivated more by my high estimate of the evils that would be produced by such a war than by a low evaluation of the evil of abortion.
The criterion most relevant to the enormity of the evil is the first one, and I think the abortion issue clears that bar. It would be possible to imagine a hypothetical situation where the abortion issue was the cause for a just war. If one country was invading another, and planned to impose a one-child policy enforced by compulsory abortions for women pregnant with a second child, I think that alone would be sufficient cause for violent resistance. Though I admit it would be difficult to imagine the imposition of a “pro-choice” legal regime as the cause, since if the country were truly pro-life, they would simply not exercise that option.
Which leads to the another problem with this line of reasoning, in that it leans upon the current answer to the question being debated. Part of the reason why the idea of a war over abortion is absurd is because our culture has become so accepting of abortion. Even if it were possible to take over the government by force for the purposes of installing a pro-life regime on the US culture as it exists today, it would not end the evil of abortion, and likely provoke an even stronger response. A significant contributing factor to that is that abortion has been established as a Constitutional right. So in using the absurdity of a war based on abortion, one is assuming (and in a sense, endorsing) our culture’s current acceptance of abortion, and the legal recognition of abortion as a constitutional right.
To me, Tiller was brave. His work makes me want to puke. But so does combat, the kind where guts are spilled and people choke on their own blood. I like to think I love my country and would fight for it. But I doubt I have the stomach to pull the trigger, much less put my life on the line.
(emphasis added)
He continues:
Several years ago, I went to a conference of abortionists. Some of the late-term providers were there. A row of tables displayed forceps for sale. They started small and got bigger and bigger. Walking along the row, you could ask yourself: Would I use these forceps? How about those? Where would I stop?
The people who do late-term abortions are the ones who don’t flinch. They’re like the veterans you sometimes see in war documentaries, quietly recounting what they faced and did. You think you’re pro-choice. You think marching or phone-banking makes you an activist. You know nothing. There’s you, and then there are the people who work in the clinics. And then there are the people who use the forceps. And then there are the people who use the forceps nobody else will use. At the end of the line, there’s George Tiller.
To Saletan, Dr. Tiller was Col. Jessup, the man willing to do the dirty work we don’t want to know about to keep our freedoms secure. We need Col. Jessup on that wall, and those favoring abortion rights need Dr. Tiller in his clinic.
Of course, Col. Jessup wasn’t really a hero; he was a bully. And Dr. Tiller isn’t a hero, either.
So, after praising as brave the man who used those forceps, Saletan establishes Tiller’s killer as a parallel, though not quite getting around to call him “brave,” Saletan has the nerve to conclude with:
If you don’t accept what he did, then maybe it’s time to ask yourself what you really believe. Is abortion murder? Or is it something less, a tragedy that would be better avoided? Most of us think it’s the latter. We’re looking for ways to prevent abortions—not just a few this month, but millions down the line—without killing or prosecuting people. Come and join us.
Maybe I’ll join you, Will, when you stop praising late-term abortionists.
Look, I understand the impulse to praise those who were recently killed. And I can also understand how someone might have trouble regarding an embryo or early term fetus as a human, and be puzzled how others might, and not think that deserves respect.
But Saletan has seen the forceps. He knows exactly what Tiller was doing. If he doesn’t see what Dr. Tiller did as killing, he should at least be able to understand how others might. Yet, he goes out of his way to call Dr. Tiller “brave” in the very same post in which he invites pro-lifers to join him in reducing abortions (by essentially abandoning their principles on this and every other issue they might care about). Um, excuse me?
Imagine a pro-life argument using the killing of Tiller as a similar launching point. Pro-choicers need to recognize that the Roe v. Wade legal regime creates an intolerable environment where violence is a result. We may not care for Tiller’s killer’s methods, but somebody has to do it, and you have to admire his bravery. Oh, and by the way, I hope pro-choice people will join us in establishing a legal environment where people like Tiller’s killer don’t feel that violence is their only outlet for their point of view. I would expect such an argument to go over about as well as a fart in church
Not so for pro-lifers. We’re supposed to carefully curb our language so as not to upset the sensibilities of well-meaning pro-choicers with whom we should be working on common-ground solutions. But pro-choice people are free to do things like praise the most notoriouts practitioner of late term abortions in the country and expect pro-lifers to happily work with them.
It is an infuriating double standard.
*I hope my characterization of Tiller’s killing as a “murder” is sufficient to establish my disapproval of Tiller’s klling, but if not, let me say that the killing was wrong an counterproductive.
Am I the only one who fails to see the appeal of trying to point out how a minority candidate for a prominent office may have benefitted from affirmative action, as applied currently to Susan Sotomayor?
If Sotomayor received help to get where she was, she apparently performed well enough at that position that she is now a credible candidate to be Supreme Court Justice. It seems to me that this would support rather than undermine affirmative action. If a person who is a good enough Circuit Judge that she is being considered for promotion to the Supreme Court would not have that position but for affirmative action, then it seems affirmative action is a net positive.
It seems the only appeal such an argument would have is to those resentful that Sotomayor was given a boost. And that is a shrinking number of people.
Marc Vachon reprises an earlier post he had made as a guest post at NYT’s Motherlode blog. It regard how he doesn’t need appreciation, and finds the idea that women who want their husbands to be more engaged in housework and childcare should express more appreciation insulting.
I have a couple problems with this.
The first is that it puts forward a personal preference as a universal norm. It may indeed be the case that Marc doesn’t need to hear “thank you” for things he does. That doesn’t make me wrong if I do. What drove this home for me was his wife Amy’s post highligthing the Motherlode post:
As the recipient of this message, I have to say this brings a sense of relief. How great that I don’t have to add ‘build up husband’s esteem’ or ‘don’t forget to tell husband you noticed his efforts’ or ‘make sure husband knows how much I love him today’ to my list of mental to do’s. Phew!
And husbands who do need this from their wives are putting a terrible burden on them. Why can’t they give their wives this “relief?”
The reality is, Marc’s lack of need for praise is as morally significant as his favorite flavor of ice cream. Everyone likes to be loved in different ways, and I’m quite certain almost everybody’s is not always convenient for their partners.
The second, is that I am not certain that this is the lesson a typical reader of the Motherlode blog needs to hear, if this thread is any guide. The advice to lavish a poorly performing partner with praise may not be terribly applicable to a well-functioning couple like the Vachons. I think an all-too tpyical pattern is the partner performs a task, gets criticized for it, and withdraws from doing this task. The advice to give praise is an attempt to break this pattern.
Is this sustainable, or a desirable end state? Maybe not. But it may be a necessary step for couples to get to where the Vachons are. Tiger Woods probably doesn’t literally keep his left arm stiff, but that doesn’t make it bad advice for a beginning golfer.
My concern is that couples needing to take this medicine will use this article as justification for not doing so, and continue in thier toxic pattern. I’m quite sure that isn’t what Marc intended, but I susepect this would be the primary outcome from this article being published in this forum.
President Obama’s judo on the abortion issue can be infuriating. First, he’ll define the terms of the debate such that any opinion besides his is illegitimate. Then, he’ll invite us to a debate with “open hearts” and “fair-minded words.” Sure, I might have just authorized killing research for embryos, but that’s no reason to start throwing nasty names around. I’m not calling you names. Let’s be civil.
Obviously, since the pro-choice, pro-research position has power, a de-escalation of rhetoric is to its advantage.
One of the most effective weapons of the pro-choice movement has been to cast pro-lifers as sexists know-nothings who don’t care about anybody except for fetuses. But the Obama “open hearts fair-minded words” approach takes that weapon away. With Obama as its standard bearer, the pro-choice movement can no longer get away with a strategy based on what sexist hypocrites those pro-lifers are.
For the pro-life movement, this is a good things. Because the more to conversation focuses on the facts of the matter, rather than how many babies a pro-life person has adopted, the more gains the pro-life movement will make, because the truth is on our side.
As I said before, I think this is a cultural soil that is more receptive to the pro-life movement than we had in the Bush Administration or we would have in a McCain Administration.
That doesn’t mean that there’s not the potential for some real harm to be done in the meantime, and important work to be done to mitigate the damage done that needs to be supported. But I’m liking where we’re going.
Oddball prediction: Roe v. Wade will ultimately be overturned with votes from Supreme Court justices appointed by Obama.
More seriously, for what Cuban describes, Twitter and Facebook take one technological step back from what Google does. A Google PageRank represents the aggregation of thousands of individual user preferences. Whereas a Twitter network represents the preferences of people I have actively chosen. Twitter gets you closer to the raw data, and allows you, rather than Google, to determine its weight.
It seems to me people will innately trust the more human solution. If I’m looking for a mechanic or a doctor, I’d ask my friends for reommendations before I’d see which one had the highest Google PageRank. It also seems a more human network will be more responsive to new information. If a previously trusted source does something to destroy that trust, my suspicion is that this information would be more quickly processed by my trusted human network than by the Google PageRank algorithm.
I think there’s a place for both models — I’m more a fan of discovering information than having it pushed to me, but I think people are always going to trust actual humans they know more than a ranking algorithm, regardless of how smart that algorithim is. So Cuban may on to something.
Twitter has largely replaced my old “off topic” posts, but I figured I’d dust it off.
Tomorrow is our Great Strides walk here in St. Louis to fund research to cure cystic fibrosis, which effects my daughter Meagan. You can follow this link to join our team or donate.
Hack alert — Rereading my posts below, I was somewhat horrified to see that on threeseparateoccasions in May alone, I began a post by summarizing someone else’s position, followed by a paragraph solely consisting of “I’m not so sure.” I may not be sure of those positions, but I am quite sure that I’ve worn out that particular device. My apologies.
Watching the Lakers last night, I think a an injury to LeBron (don’t call me LBJ) James is the only thing that could prevent the Cavs from winning a title. If the Lakers were a champioship team, they would have taken care of business last night. There is no way that Rockets team should be able to keep up with them. No way they should have been able to do anything inside. You never know what Pau Gasol and Andrew Bynum you’re going to get in a given game. The Nuggets may be able to give the Cavs a better series.
Don’t think the Phillies are going to mount much of a defense of their title. The pitching isn’t there. Can Jamie Moyer be switched to a LOOGY?
The original Gladwell David and Goliath has a bit of a moralistic tone:
But let’s remember who made that rule: Goliath. And let’s remember why Goliath made that rule: when the world has to play on Goliath’s terms, Goliath wins.
The games are ultimately fixed. If David comes up with a novel strategy for Goliath to win, Goliath will change the rules to exert his dominance.
This is unfair, Gladwell leads us to believe. After all, all David wants to do is substitute effort for talent. Shouldn’t that be celebrated?
I’m not so sure.
You see, I kinda like basketball. And part of what I like about basketball is that it provides a wonderful forum for talented athletes like LeBron James and Kobe Bryant to display their skills. Watching them curse in frustration while a bunch of hungry players with floorburns on their knees presses their teams into futility might be fun once. The Pistons victory over the Lakers in 2004 was enjoyable. But I want to see these guys driving toward the basket, making great shots, and exhibiting their talent.
If a sport makes has a wide path where an underdog can compensate for a talent deficit with effort and discipline, that sport is doomed. Want proof? See NHL, 1995-2000,the New Jersey Devils, Florida Panthers, and the neutral zone trap. David beating Goliath makes for great stories, and great sports movies, but ultimately boring sports.
The N.C. State and Villanova victories are part of basketball lore, but the NCAA realized that less talented teams being able to beat more talented teams by taking the air out of the ball was a bug, not a feature, and put in the shot clock. Not because it needed to consolidate Goliath’s power, but because standing around dribbling down the clock isn’t the game of basketball. And sinking your own ships isn’t sea battle.
The same goes for “unpredictable” postseasons. The baseball postseason in the wild card era is essentially determined by luck and if you have a dominant starting pitcher. If you have Cole Hamels, Chris Carpenter, Josh Beckett, or Curt Schilling, you can ride them to a World Series victory, even with average talent around them. This does not seem to have resulted in a surge in popularity for baseball.
Obviously there are are some insurgent innovations that should be embraced. And the games will continue to evolve in part based on these. But games need to strike a balance between being open to novel tactics, and remaining true to what the sport is, and allowing the best players to be the stars. And I think this balance should be tilted more toward the latter than the former.
Torture opponents are often confronted with why they give the issue any attention at all in the face of other evils like abortion. Mike Kinsley is fond of calling out the “inconsistency” of the ferocity of pro-life opposition to embryonic research as opposed to IVF.
I think it is important to stop evils becoming part of our precedent before they start, so when our society is contemplating crossing new frontiers of abuse to human life like torture, it is important that be oppose. This post by Jonah Goldberg illustrates why:
Whether it was necessary or not is a serious debate, but I am personally at a loss to understand why the shortcut of firebombing Dresden was less outrageous than waterboarding some SS offficer would be. Likewise, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki involved the deliberate killing of civilians.
I’m not eager to discover what future evils will be argued for on the basis that it’s difficult to understand how they’re worse than torture.
It seems that if your team faces a talent disparity, what you want to do is lower the sample size. The lower the sample size, the greater the chance for an anomalous result (i.e. your team winning). In basketball, this means running down the shot clock to minimize the total number of possessions. In football, this would mean running the football to keep the clock moving and minimize the number of snaps. The greater the sample size, the greater the chance that Goliath’s innate advantage will assert itself. The lower the sample size, the more likely strange things will happen. On any given Sunday, any team can beat any other team, and this is particularly true if the Sunday you’re given contains a small number of plays.
Now, you still need to win those possessions, and Gladwell would argue that speed-up tactics like the full court press and no-huddle offense may result in more data points, but each one is skewed to the underdog’s advantage. But in my opinion, unless the tactic targets a specific weakness of the dominant team, such as only having one ball handler, or a pass rusher who’s out of shape, this is more than offset by the expansion of the sample size.
I think Gladwell’s definition of “underdog” is a bit broader than mine, such that it includes this year’s Louisville team, which entered the NCAA tournament #1 overall.
But I think that definition is so broad as to be meaningless. Gladwell defends including the 1996 Kentucky team on the basis that it had only one NBA star, Antoine Walker. But it’s hard to think of may college teams that had multiple NBA stars. Phi Slamma Jamma and the early 1980’s North Carolina team are the only ones that sping to mind. Chris Webber is the only member of the Fab Five to really go on to stardom. The great UNLV team of the early 1990’s produced Larry Johnson. Duke is famous for the star-crossed history of its graduates. How about that North Carolina team that won the 2005 championship? If the 1996 Kentucky Wildcats, with Rick Pitino as coach, can be considered “underdogs,” so can anybody. The closest may be the 2006-7 Florida team coached by Pitino protege’ Billy Donovan.
Rick Pitino has his choice of what kind of players he want to recruit. He chooses to go with players who are more coachable than talented, and that’s his prerogative. Mike Krzyzewski goes after a different type of player, as does Jim Calhoun and Bill Self and Roy Williams and Tom Izzo (there’s a guy who wins with less talent!). Each has had success, but doesn’t make their approach prescriptive for everybody.
Gladwell may be working on different time horizons than a single game. Yes, Louisville may have entered the tournament #1, but they only had #30 or so talent. Ok. But I think what this demonstrates is that these tactics only take you so far. The high school team in Gladwell’s article lost the championship game. The article blames the refs; I think they just hit their ceiling.
But, his calm, reasoned argument, which could have found its way into Dr. Glendon’s speech if she had not decided to absent herself from the ceremonies, will not be the face of the opposition to Notre Dame’s decision next Sunday. Randall Terry will garner all the media attention. That is a shame for Notre Dame, a shame for the pro-life movement, and a shame for the Church.
Perhaps this is because those in support giving Obama the degree have been satisfied to simply point at Randall Terry and cast the bishops opposed as toads of the Republican Party rather than engage thoughtful criticisms like Prof. Garnett’s.
Ramesh Ponnuru has done more than anyone else at National Review to present the Catholic perspective on torture. But that is damning with extremely faint praise. Ponnuru’s contributions tend to be stepping in when another Cornerite (including Catholics Kathryn Jean-Lopez and Andrew McCarthy) imply that supporting torture is part of what it means to be a conservative. The treatment of the torture issue on NRO, considering the number of Catholics involved, was simply pathetic.
One thing I think Ponnuru does not account for is that he has a particular responsibility to oppose torture since it was being implemented and advocated from his political home. His witness would have made it more difficult to portray torture abolitionists as lefty peacenicks who hated Bush and would have been just as happy to live under sharia law.
Ponnuru writes:
One might argue that the abortion license is well entrenched and will take a long time to end, whereas torture is a recent, Bush-era innovation that can be put behind us if we take the right steps. But (even assuming the basic truth of that account) you could take that as a reason to prioritize either the easier or the harder task.
The implication is that it is somehow nobler for him to take on the more difficult task of ending abortion than the “easier” task of confronting torture. I disagree.
It is much easier for me to provide food for my wife and daughters than it is to solve world hunger. But doing the former is my sacred responsibility, and I would be wrong to forsake it in order to do the “harder task.”
The Catholics at National Review were in a position to stop the rhetorical momentum for torture before it started. Even now, they are in a position to deal it a death blow. That they have not is a profound disappointment.
I’m beginning to think that we accept things like waterboarding because we’ve developed a warped sense of what “courage” is.
As the US has moved from David to Goliath, we’ve had to redefine what it means to be courageous. Even though we may want David anymore, we want the people doing our unpleasant tasks to think they’re more like David than Goliath. So being part of an overwhelming force with a huge technical advantage is considered courageous. Bill Maher’s timing was off, but he had a point.
In recent times, I have seen the following hailed as “courageous”
Jim Manzi seems to get what real courage is. It is not being willing to do nasty stuff in order to keep ourselves and our loved ones secure. It’s not attacking those we disagree with from a position of safety.
It is in stating true to our principles even when doing so is dangerous.
I pray the Holy Spirit will fill us with genuine courage.
