Man Bites Blog

From Salon’s chilling investigation of the US’s torture enhanced interrogation program:

The CIA’s waterboarding regimen was so excruciating, the memos show, that agency officials found themselves grappling with an unexpected development: detainees simply gave up and tried to let themselves drown. “In our limited experience, extensive sustained use of the waterboard can introduce new risks,” the CIA’s Office of Medical Services wrote in its 2003 memo. “Most seriously, for reasons of physical fatigue or psychological resignation, the subject may simply give up, allowing excessive filling of the airways and loss of consciousness.”

But, you know, the suffering of the suspect is an unintended side effect of the primary act of acquiring life-saving information, so it’s all good under the principal of double effect…

This post form James Martin, S.J on the America blog exhibits a lot of what’s wrong with Catholic involvement in politics these days.

He passes on a post from Peter McDermott calling on liberals to take some lessons from Irish soccer fans: work together and don’t boo against the home team.

The problem with this advice is the assumption that the “home team” is one’s political alliance.

How many evils in the past have been fueled by Catholics cheering on the “home team” of their political party as they pursued evil policies like aggressive wars, increases access to abortion, embryo-destroying research, and most recently, the embrace of torture.

The last thing Catholics need to do right now is intensify their loyalty to their political teams. Instead, we need to re-consider what team we’re on.

One common thread between the Tolefson piece I cited below and the Lee piece is that intentionally causing pain is not intrinsically evil.

Which sounds absurd at first, but not after you give it some thought. A doctor trying to pinpoint an injury might poke and prod and request the patient perform different movements, and use the patient’s pain response to make a diagnosis.

And it doesn’t seem to be an example of double effect. The treatment of the injury is distinct from the diagnosis. The patient’s pain is a means to the end of treating the injury. And it is intended.

Ok, so we’ve established that intentionally causing pain is not intrinsically evil. So how can we say that waterboarding is torture, and torture is intrinsically evil?

Well, a couple things:

• While it is true that the pain in a diagnostic situations is intended, the diagnostic activity would still make sense if there were efforts to minimize the pain. For the purposes of the diagnostic exercise, a moderate or mild pain response is as good as a severe one.
• The pain caused is related to the pain of the original injury. The clinician doesn’t attempt to cause left leg pain to treat a right arm injury.

In essence, this is similar to why theraputic amputation is licit.

So what does this tell us about interrogation?

Well that establishing that a technique causes pain is not sufficient to establish that it is torture or evil. However:

• The pain must be related to the secret.
• The technique must nor be dependent on the severity of the pain caused

In other words, simulating drowning is not a valid response to someone holding a secret we’d very much like to know.

Intensifying the pain of maintaining the secret may be licit. Making the suspect clear of what the consequences of holding this information is may be licit.

Waterboarding during SERE training may be licit for related reasons. The trainer is working on strengthening the trainee’s resistance to these techniques. It is not for some different purpose.

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It occurs to me that this debate is working on the head when it needs to work on the heart.

Those opposed to waterboarding assert it is intrinsically immoral. Those supporting it respond that some other activity that shares some characteristics with waterboarding or torture is obviously not intrinsically evil, so how can torture be? And around we go again

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I should also mention that MZ posted a long response to the Toelfson article at Vox Nova.

Matt Yglesias notes the begining of same sex marriage in D.C with charactersitic snark:

Yesterday, I found the idea of “man on dog” sex repellent. This morning, though, same-sex couples finally got the right to marry in Washington, DC and ever since then, I’ve been finding it more and more appealing. Indeed, I’ve been googling up box turtle porn all afternoon.

Har Har Har.

But as arguments go, this resides in the same category as, “We just had a big snowstorm. Global warming must be a hoax!”

To see why, let’s look at another example.

Last year, as a result of a funding shortfall Metro St. Louis enacted some draconian cuts in service.

And during that time…. life went on, pretty much as normal as far as I can tell. I’m sure those who were reliant on the service faced hardships, but life in St. Louis did not come to a screeching halt until the Missouri legislature provided some funding to restore some of the service.

Does this represent a case against the upcoming ballot initiative for a sales tax to make this permanent? I tend to think not.

The case against same sex marriage is not reliant on the world ending, or people marrying box turtles the day it is enacted. It is that it is an additional step in weakening the link between marriage and children, which is likely to have effects that will take a long time to play out.

So, yes, I don’t think any Washingtonians woke up this morning with a strange new respect for bestiality. That doesn’t mean enacting same sex marriage was wise.

Is there anyone who hasn’t enjoyed the medal ceremonies when Canadian athletes win the gold medal? Yesterday’s men’s curling ceremony may be the best example. The athletes with their arms around each other, and everyone in the house singing along with the anthem.

Contrast this with a US ceremony, say the one for the US bobsled team (for which I couldn’t find on online video). When the American anthem starts, it’s the end of fun. Everyone must stand at attention, and solemnly watch the flag rise.

Obviously, the games being in Canada mean that US gold medal ceremonies aren’t going to turn into a sing-a-long. But I don’t recall US gold medal ceremonies in Salt Lake City or Atlanta being so purely joyous.

Some possibilities:

• The US flag and anthem has a lot more baggage than the Canadian anthem and flag, especially in recent years.
• Which probably partly explains the difference between Canadian patriotism and American patriotism. Canadian patriotism seems like genuine love of country. American patriotism feels compulsory, like being nice to the boss.
• Then there’s the anthems themselves. The Star-Spangled Banner is famously difficult to sing, and focuses exclusively on a single battle, whereas O Canada celebrates much of the country, and only tangentially refers to war.

I’m rooting for the US in today’s hockey game, but I have to admit the gold medal ceremony will be more fun if Canada wins.

On a day when conservative scholar Wayne Tolefson, (who recently published a book against embryonic research with that “bigot ” Robert George) published a thoughtful critique of Marc Thiessen’s torture defense, over at Vox Nova, Morning’s Minion decided to post a nearly year-old symposium from National Review on the ethics of waterboarding, that generally had a favorable view of the practice.

First, let me say that the symposium in specific, and National Review’s endorsement of torture in general, are despicable. The symposium itself seems to be a “Coalition for Fog,” more trying to hopelessly cloud the issue than mounting a clear defense of it. Moving on…

MM tacks on this cricticism of Franciscan University Professor Patrick Lee’s entry:

Lee finishes with an adolescent rant about those damned ”lib-uh-rals” who have only lately discovered the concept of moral absolutes. He fails to realize that he is engaging in the exact same kind of moral relativism. It’s incredible that a chaired professor at Franciscan University could deliver such a diatribe.

Wow, that must be some awful stuff… Let’s take a look:

Liberals have for decades not only denied that there are moral absolutes (specific, exceptionless moral norms) but also denied even the existence of objective moral truth — and have labeled defenders of such moral truths “right-wing extremists.” Have they now seen the light? If so, then perhaps we can now discuss not only why torture is wrong, but also the moral truth regarding intentionally killing unborn human beings, denying unborn human beings equal protection under the law, funding research that involves deliberately dismembering some human beings for the benefit of others, and attempting to coerce health-care workers to violate their consciences.

Torture is wrong — but if, and only if, every human being possesses a profound and inherent personal dignity.

Wait a minute… Isn’t this essentially the “consistent ethic of life” or “seamless garment” position? Isn’t this just the mirror image of the “pro-lifers don’t care about children once they’re born” argument, except not quite as personally nasty?

Lee’s paragraph isn’t moral relativism; it expresses a hope that a discussion of torture would lead to a more frank discussion of abortion and embryonic research.

Wouldn’t this be a good thing for a pro-life Catholic? If not, why not?

In 2008, Cole Hamels took home the MVP of both the World Series and NLCS. He was an ace pitcher who led the Phillies to the world title. Once the Phillies won their third game, and it was apparent the Rays would gave to beat Hamels to win the Series, the Series was essentially over.

In 2009, the Phillies deemed it necessary to trade for another ace starting pitcher in midseason. In four postseason starts, Hamels never got out of the sixth inning. His turn in the rotation would have been up for a Game 7, but if the Phillies had forced it, they would have seriously considered other options.

Yet, many sabermetricians would have you believe that there really was no substantial difference between the 2008 Hamels and the 2009 Hamels, and anyone who think differently is stuck on silly narratives and debunked stats.

To which I respond: are you serious?

I understand that the MSM memes are annoying — Hamels had a rough year and needs to come back strong; David Eckstein is a gritty, gutty player. A-Rod doesn’t come through in the clutch. And so on…

But there is a kernel of truth to each of these, and they are fun to talk about.

When a pitcher goes from being a mortal lock in one postseason to a liability the next, people are going to look for explanations. And random fluctuations in opposing batting average on balls in play isn’t going to satisfy.

And that’s what make sports fun.

I’m sure it’s possible that the difference between the 2008 and 2009 Hamels can be entirely attributed to factors beyond Hamels’s control. I also know that I would need to accept pretty heavy odds in order to bet on the 2009 Hamels over the 2008 Hamels. And that it’s interesting to discuss why.

Ramesh Ponnuru rises to defend March Thiessen of the charge that he has disregarded the Church’s teachings on torture:

Previous posts of Marc’s should make it clear that he does not see himself as either an advocate of torture or a dissenter from Catholic teaching. Rather, he does not interpret the inviolable norm against torture as encompassing waterboarding and the other interrogation techniques at issue. Even if he is wrong in his interpretation of the Catechism — which is by no means clear — he is not “disregarding” it.

Would that Thiessen’s error was in simply disregarding Church teaching!

No, what Thiessen is doing is much more dangerous — he is twisting Church teaching to support his preferred practice, causing great scandal and confusion that will take a lot of work to undo.

And, no, it is clear that Thiessen’s interpretation of the Catechism, and Church teaching on this issue, is wrong.

Sadly, Ramesh’s statement acknowledging the theoretical possibility that Thiessen’s interpretation is incorrect, seems to be the strongest statement against waterboarding one can find at NRO, along with a host of commentary supporting it. For a publication that employs a number of Catholics, and once had something of a Catholics identity, this is a disgrace.*

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*UPDATE: I am pleased to report that the commentary Ponnuru was responding to was published on NRO by Mike Potemra, ad includes this:

I think torture is a great evil, and that the resort to it in the past decade is a black spot on America’s record.

and my general swipe at NRO is not operational. My RSS feed of The Corner filters for only certain authors (to which I may now add Potemra), so I had not seen the original post, and had incorrectly assumed it came from elsewhere.

I posted the following in a comment thread to a post Zippy decided to delete for reasons not connected to my comment, and wanted to perserve it here:

Read the rest of this entry »

Will Saletan writes a piece outlining that if you go to the website suggested in the Tim Tebow Super Bowl Ad, it includes videos from families where a mother was induced prematurely and gave birth to babies that did not survive for long.

Saletan concludes from the absence of any mention of health problems for the baby that the induction was for the mother’s health. He also asserts that inducing at 32 weeks is a risky thing to do for the baby.* This conflicts with the Tebow story that you should persevere no matter what.

Now, Saletan is pro-choice, but is usually fair. Though he’s not above the occasional cheap shot.

So, I’m not sure if he means this piece to be a Kinsleyesque consistency gotcha. The subhead, “the pro-life case for pregnancy termination” suggests as much, though I’m pretty sure Saletan doesn’t write the headlines.

If it is, then I’m not sure what the point is. Usually the point of a consistency argument is to demonstrate that the target does not hold a position for the reasons it claims, but for some other, less noble reason. For abortion, it is typically used to demonstrate that pro-life people aren’t really pro-life, but just want to control women and their sexuality.

But this case doesn’t get there. In one case, the pro-life group applauds Pam Tebow for carrying her dangerous pregnancy to term. In another case the pro-life movement promotes a story of women who were induced early, perhaps for their own health. And this proves….. what, exactly?

If anything, I would think this would be complimentary to pro-lifers, since it demonstrates that we don’t have this cartoonish fetish to fetuses above all else. We acknowledge that there is some balancing between the health of the mother and the fetus. We’re not the caricatures you’ve made us out to be.

But that’s not the tone the piece takes, it reads more like a Gotcha! piece. I suspect it’s because Saletan doesn’t care for Pam Tebow’s brand of being pro-life. But I don’t think her message is that mothers must be willing to sacrifice themselves to carry their pregnancies to full term. It’s that she decided to devote herself to carrying her child, and she’s glad she did.

The main difference is that the procedure Pam Tebow refused was abortion, and the procedure the other women accepted was induction. Which leads to the astounding conclusion that pro-life people oppose abortion!

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*There’s some serious problems with both these assertions, as this father of a child born at 31 weeks can attest. Saletan’s medical conclusions from the video here makes Bill Frist’s long-distance diagnosis of Terri Schiavo look like the pinnacle of clinical diligence.

But I’ll stipulate these points for the sake of this post.

Jeff Atwood argues that having a great team that executes is more important than having a great idea. I’m inclined to agree, but this raises the question of how you build and maintain a great team that executes.

Part of the answer can be found in this post by Merlin Mann at 43 Folders on how to focus:

Although, I must add one important “Step Zero,” borne of my own tedious experience.

Before you sweat the logistics of focus: first, care. Care intensely.

Specifically, if you discover, in frustration, that you’re pathologically incapable of doing one thing at a time, consider the possibility that you’ve been unknowingly trying to “focus” on two, twenty, or twenty thousand disparate things that you don’t really care that much about. Just consider it.

Think about those times when you really disappeared into challenging work. You had to tear yourself away, right?

Because, during those happy times you were fortunate enough to find yourself engaged with something that you cared intensely about, you probably started asking a really different sort of question.

A more transitive, muscular question that shows you own the attention that others may see as a bowl full of complimentary Jolly Ranchers, free for the grabbing.

That’s when you ask,

How many things do I need to shed, cancel, defer, drop, shank, or shit-can with extreme prejudice in order to singlemindedly focus on this one thing that I love?

Which raises the next question: why do people care.

A big reason is to make people care is the great idea.

The idea doesn’t have to be the objectively best idea. But the team has to believe it’s a great idea.

The New Orleans Saints just won the Super Bowl. Their coach, Sean Payton, has been praised for his imaginative play-calling and fearless risk taking.

Is Sean Payton the best coach in the NFL? This year, he was. Is his play-calling that much more imaginative than other NFL coaches? I’m not so sure.

But the New Orleans Saints believed that Payton was a great imaginative coach, and they thus cared deeply about the team’s success and were willing to commit themselves fully to it. And they also believed that Drew Brees was the best quarterback. And, with few exceptions, the same is true for all recent Super Bowl champions.

So does that mean that having a great idea is most important? No, but the idea has to be good enough that the team can believe that if they commit themselves to executing it, it will be a great success.

Recently, President Obama called for a playoff system for college football. But I think things could be worse.

Imagine if none of the good teams were in a conference, but instead got to choose their opponents and locations in order to maximize how they would look good. They could even choose to only play sympathetic teams that would go out of their way to ensure that only that team’s best qualities were displayed, and that none of its flaws were exposed. At halftime, they could show a reel displaying the other good teams’ flaws. What would you think would result?

Well, we would end up with several undefeated teams, and the fans and boosters of each one would claim that their team is the champion. And they could all be right, for all we know, because none of the best teams were seriously challenged. We might have a vote to determine the champion, but that would just be a popularity contest.

This seems to be the state of things in the marketplace of ideas these days.

Pundits peddling a book go to a string of sycophantic interviews from ideological allies. On the Cable News and comedy shows, hosts cherry pick the most embarrassing sound bites from the opposition to make them look foolish. Bloggers do the same thing with writings. In a recent comment, Zippy summed it up nicely:

In general, the intellectual state of affairs today is the pathetic opposite of the Middle Ages, when every self-respecting disputant considered it necessary to address the best arguments of his opponents. Courting Disaster and its Catholic promotional arm, EWTN, seem to be nothing but lightweight propaganda. The purpose seems to be to provide conscience novacaine and other reassurances for the already-convinced — I can hear Raymond Arroyo’s smooth mockery as he puts words in the mouths of those who object, “…you are a brute for doing it and a lousy Catholic…” even now — rather than to advance a respectable argument.

from this embarrassing interview from The World Over.

Marc Thiessen will be able to get on the best seller list without ever having to seriously engage an opposing argument.

If we were to award the college national championship to a team that never played another Top 25 team, there would be no end to the whining. But we seem quite content to think this is a great way to settle the most difficult political questions we face, and determine who will lead us.

If progressives were to identify organizations, issues, and people within those organizations who were unlikely to change the organization’s position on that issue, I suspect the Catholic Church, abortion, and Pope Benedict would be in the top five.

Yet, Timothy Noah, apparently in all earnestness, has written an open entreaty to the Holy Father asking him to loosen up the Church’s position on abortion in order to enable health care reform to pass.

So, to summarize, proposed legislation is running into the well-known and established position of a 2000 year old religion that is followed by a large number of Americans. The apparent solution is not to adjust the legislation so it does not bump into that, but to try to convince that religion to change its stance, or try to convince the leaders of that religion that it really doesn’t run against their principle, because the CBO says it’s deficit-neutral.

One interesting note is that by taking this gambit, Noah is implicitly admitting that he considers the Democratic Party to be more dogmatic about abortion than the Catholic Church. In his opinion, lobbying the foreign leader of the Catholic Church to endorse a specific piece of legislation, overruling his bishops in America, something that has never happened in history, is a more hopeful path than working with the American legislators who are drafting health care reform to do so in a way that does not run against Catholic principles. This in spite of the fact that many Democratic Senators and Representatives, including the Vice President and Speaker of the House, are Catholic.

So who are the inflexible dogmatists?

BTW, Michael Novak tried this gambit with John Paul II (though, unlike Noah, Novak is in fact Catholic) with the Iraq War. JPII declined then, and I think Benedict will do the same.

In the dotCommonweal thread I alluded to below, the following concerns about the Tebow ad were raised:

• It would be wrong to imply that it is likely that those who choose life will be rewarded with a Heisman Trophy winner
• The message should be that all life is sacred, not just that of a Heisman Trophy winner.
• It would be better to represent a wide range of outcomes.

Well, yeah. The ad is not designed to be an air-tight self-contained comprehensive presentation of the pro-life point of view.

It is a single story that may get people to start thinking and asking questions. And when they do, it’s up to the rest of us who consider ourselves to be pro-life to be there with answers.

As I said below, the principle of double effect states:

This set of criteria states that an action having foreseen harmful effects practically inseparable from the good effect is justifiable if upon satisfaction of the following:

• the nature of the act is itself good, or at least morally neutral;
• the agent intends the good effect and not the bad either as a means to the good or as an end itself;
• the good effect outweighs the bad effect in circumstances sufficiently grave to justify causing the bad effect and the agent exercises due diligence to minimize the harm.

So how do we determine if the bad effect is truly separable from the good effect, or if the effect itself is good?

I propose the following standard: If efforts to minimize the bad effect, either before or subsequent to the act would make sense (absent a change of heart or realizing the first act was a mistake), then it may be the case that the act itself is good and be permissible under the principle of double effect.

For example, if I fire a gun at somebody, it may make sense for me to use a silencer. It may make sense for me to call for medical assistance immediately afterward. But it would make no sense for me to yell “Duck!” as I’m firing (beyond the practical limitations). The loud noise may be an unwanted side effect. The target’s death may be an unwanted side effect. But the bullet reaching its target is not.

Some more examples:

• It would not make sense to call someone a racist, and follow it up with, “no offense.”
• It would not make sense to provide SCUBA gear to somebody I was about to waterboard.

One other example that comes to mind is that offering Christ the wine as He was on the Cross was merely a cruel joke. They were torturing Him to death. That his the point of crucifixion.

If any effort to minimize the harm would render the act senseless, then that negative effect is an intrinsic part of the act. It is impossible to waterboard someone without intending to give them the sensation they’re drowning.

Let me stress that if an act clears this bar, it does not mean the act is justified; merely that, in the words of Cardinal Dulles, it “might arguably be licit.”

For example, the US dropped warning pamphlets before dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This made sense in terms of acting to minimize the harm. But, in itself, it does not establish the morality of the bombings.

Apparently, if Bill Donohue ever tires of dramatically flopping to ground at anything remotely provocative to Catholics, it appears Micheal Sean Winters is prepared to step into the breach:

In CMR’s analysis of the 2008 election, the first four items on their issues list were all related to gays in the military or, as they nicely put it, creating a “San Francisco military.” Surely, Professor George, if not the people at CMR, knows that before San Francisco was a city, he was a saint, and a pacifist, so the allusion to a “San Francisco military” is as offensive to Catholics as it is to gays.

So, apparently if you name something after a saint, then associating qualities to that thing that are contrary to its namesake is supposed to be offensive to Catholics.

Please.

By this standard, if a Michigan fan shouts, “Notre Dame sucks” at a football game, Catholics should take great offense, because before Notre Dame was a university, she was Our Lady, the Blessed Virgin Mary, and thus the allusion to Our Lady performing any kind of sexual act is as offensive to Catholics as it would be to the football team.

But wait, there’s more! Isn’t there a team called the “San Francisco 49ers?” Didn’t St. Francis give away all his possessions and live a life of poverty? And now his name is being associated with gold rushers? Could we imagine a less fitting name? And people get upset about the Washington Redskins…

What this reveals is an almost desperate attempt to take offense, and I have to confess I just don’t get it.*

And, by the way, here’s the chain that connects Prof. George to the offensive phrase:

• Prof. George is the founder of the American Principles Project.
• The American Principles Project linked to an article from the Center for Military Readiness.
• In its analysis of the 2008 election, the CMR used the term “San Francisco militant.”

And this is a significant part of the case Winters mounts to begin, “Professor George’s organization betrays a bigotry that is at the very least unseemly in a tenured professor.” and conclude with, “But, the bishops who support and applaud Professor George should be aware of what they are signing up for. He is not only a thoughtful defender of natural law, he is also the proprietor of a D.C.-based advocacy organization that is embarrassing in its bigotry, especially embarrassing to an intellectual. Especially to a Catholic.”

Then there’s the ridiculous part where Winters attempts to put APP’s efforts to block the appointment of Kevin Jennigs, who wrote the foreword to a book called “Quering Elementary Education,” in the same category as efforts to remove “The Catcher in the Rye” from school curricula.

I understand why a progressive would find much to disagree with from the APP (though if you visit their website now, you’ll have a difficult time finding the obsession with homosexuality that Winters and others accuse them of, though you will find much evidence of support for Democratic pro-life Representative Bart Stupak) and Prof. George. I am with Winters in thinking that the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy is ill-considered, needlessly discriminatory, and ought to be repealed. I just don’t think that everyone who disagrees with me is a bigot.

Prof. George is one of the most effective advocates for issues Catholic progressives claim to embrace. Pro-choice writer Will Saletan wrote of Prof. George and Christopher Tollefson:

They’re civil, logical, and smart. I’ve seen George pick apart fuzzy-thinking adversaries at meetings of the bioethics council. It’s like watching a cat with mice. Today, unfortunately, I’ll be the mouse.

In what I have read from him, Prof. George is tough, but fair. I would not want to be on the other side of a debate with him.

But those wanting the US to move in a pro-life direction shouldn’t want to see him dismissed as a bigot, either. That doesn’t mean he should be immune from criticism, but I think it should take more than an organization he founded linking to a page from and organization that once used the term “San Francisco militant” for us to throw him to the curb.

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*One possibility is some hard feelings over the 2004 election, and some of tough words Prof. George had for John Kerry and his supporters. My responses:

1. I find Prof. George’s explanation of those words convincing.
2. It’s been 5 1/2 years. It might be time to get over it.

On the rare occasion when Vox Nova takes a break from relentless pro-lifer bashing and actually advocates on behalf of the unborn, the structure of the post is typically as follows:

1. Straightforward summary of the current events.
2. Jab at Republicans for failing to embrace said policy consistently.
3. Recommendation for how the Administration should proceed.
4. Note that this would be consistent with the Administration’s campaign promises and general character.
5. Lament that this will still not be enough to convince some pro-lifers that the Administration is not the most radically pro-abortion in history.
6. One last shot that this would all be unnecessary if Republicans claiming to be pro-life would just go along.

If the Administration fails to take the suggested action, there is no subsequent post holding them accountable.

If promoting the cause of the unborn were a crime, I wouldn’t want to be the prosecutor trying to mount a case to convict.

UPDATE: And don’t get me started on the carnival of concern trolling going on in this dotCommonweal thread.

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The structure of this post was inspired in part by this hilarious video:

In 2006, after stumbling to an 83-79 regular season record, the St. Louis Cardinals went on a surprising postseason run culminating in a World Series title.

I’ve commented before that I found the Cardinals’ run something less than captivating.

Perhaps part of the reason is that between almost every inning I was treated to testimonials from Sheryl Crow, John Danforth, Michael J. Fox, and parents of children with diseases that I needed to vote for a constitutional amendment declaring that embryos were not persons, and that the state would never interfere with them being used for research. These ads were 95% funded by a single family that stood to materially gain from the amendment’s passage.

These ads annoyed me. Yet it never occurred to me that the thing to do was to pressure the network showing the baseball playoffs and World Series to stop showing these ads. Or to mumble threats about the impact the celebrities’ advocacy would have on their careers. Or to contemplate how I would shield my children’s eyes from these terrible ads.

I just kind of figured that seeing ads that piss me off, even ads advocating what I consider the legalized killing of innocents, was part of the price I paid for living in a free society.

How silly I was, since as the links above show, this is not how those in favor of abortion (and in this case, please don’t tell me that blocking a woman from sharing her story is “pro-choice”) react when the tables are turned. (Though I should note that there are some reasonable voices on that side).

But I suspect that if I were to have chosen that course, I would have been dismissed as a freedom-hating crank who cannot handle views other than his own.

But maybe it’s for the best, since the controversy has done more to publicize Tebow’s story than a single ad ever could. Even if CBS yields, anyone who now follows the news knows Tebow’s story.

And they also know that the abortion industry is desperate to keep you from hearing that story. That the right to abortion is so delicate that it requires blowing away almost every other right we hold dear. At this point, I almost hope they do keep it off the air.

In a recent Slate article, Emily Bazelon recounts her and her husband’s response when their 10-year old son protested their tradition of having a birthday book swap with classmates rather than having gifts.

My first response was to salute Bazelon and her husband for hearing out her son’s concerns, even if it didn’t have an impact on the tradition.

The majority of the commentary seems to be that Bazelon and her husband are very selfish parents for turning their children’s platform into a platform from which they preach their pro-reading anti-consumerist Gospel. And I did find myself nodding along.

But then I found myself asking why. Well, it’s his birthday after all. And it should be about him, not his parents. Who are they to dictate how he should celebrate his birthday. And isn’t it rude to tell guests what gifts are acceptable?

Perphaps. But it is also true that Eli is part of a family. And that family has certain values, and occasions like birthdays are occasions for reinforcing those values.* That the world doesn’t revolve around you, yes even on your birthday, is an important lesson.** And since Eli is only 10, the values of the family are still determined by his parents.

I’m quite sure that the mainstream of middle-class American culture has not arrived at correct answers about everything, and finding the right answers will involve some families going against the grain. I’m not certain Bazelon’s family has hit upon the ideal way to do that, but I applaud the general direction.

Some commentators predicted that the boys will one day rebel if forced to continue this. I think it’s at least as likely that they will be glad they were part of a family that had values, and wasn’t willing to just go along with the prevailing culture.

Others were concerned about Bazelon and her husband teaching Eli to “conform” to their values. But aren’t these commentators demanding that the family conform to the prevailing culture? And isn’t this more dangerous?

I’ll take child that grudgingly goes along with the values of his family over a family that just goes along with the demands of the prevailing culture.

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*Interestingly, the story includes the celebration of Hanukkah as an occasion where Bazelon allowed her son to completely indulge in receiving. It seems to me that religious holidays would be a preferable time for a counter-cultural ritual. But anyway…

** I say this as a man who has married into a family that has family reunions at a campground in Michigan on weekends that invariably bracket or include my birthday. I am not a camper. So, I am quite disabused of the notion that my birthday will be all about me.

In this thread at Catholic and Enjoying It, the question was raised about why some find it necessary to rain on Massachusetts Citizens For Life, and I thought I’d answer..

Let me start by saying that anyone who labors on behalf of the unborn deserves our prayers and respect, and MCFL certainly has mine. It is an absolute scandal how many Catholics are willing to keep themselves at arm’s length from the pro-life movement, and criticize their efforts from the sidelines, and I certainly don’t want to be a part of that.

Nevertheless, we can all sometimes lose sight of the forest for the trees, and can use the benefit of outside perspective to get us back on track.

Continued below the fold…

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