You didn’t ask for it, but here it is: read The New Wisdom on your mobile phone simply by pointing your WAP web browser to www.thenewwisdom.com. A nice light version of the site will display just for you!

And don’t forget to use your favorite reader to subscribe to our RSS feed. Your mail client probably does it, or you can add it to your personalized Google page, My Yahoo! page, My MSN or whatever you use.

Finally! An administration that understands that national parks aren’t a place for nature. They’re refuges for snowmobiles, off-road vehicles, cell phone towers, and lots of artificial lights!

The Interior Department’s proposed changes hinge on what Park Service employees say is a revision of what they have been taught is one of the highest priorities: to do no harm to the park.

Since its inception in 1916, the Park Service has been charged with maintaining parks “unimpaired” for future generations to enjoy. According to current policies, when park officials determine an activity may lead to impairment, officials are authorized to ban the activity.

The proposed changes would alter the definition of impairment from “an impact to any park resource or value [that] may constitute an impairment” to one that can be proved to “permanently and irreversibly adversely [affect] a resource or value.” Critics say the new definition would set a standard that is impossibly high.

It’s also good that the author of these policy changes believes that national parks are the perfect place to subtley give government sponsorship to religious ideas:

Last year, [assistant secretary of the Interior Paul Hoffman] overruled the decision of the superintendent at Grand Canyon National Park to remove religious plaques on display near the South Rim. And he instructed the park to allow a book that espoused a creationist view of the canyon’s formation, which runs counter to the park’s own scientific-based approach and had been criticized by the park’s scientific staff.

And don’t worry. The man has excellent credentials for setting park policy:

Before being appointed, Hoffman “ran the chamber of commerce in Cody, Wyo., a gateway to Yellowstone National Park, where he opposed the park’s attempt to ban snowmobile tourism, opposed reintroduction of wolves, and called for more development of the park” (source). This is hardly enough to qualify someone to work in the Interior. The key, of course, is that Hoffman is a political appointee. His qualifications? “He recieved a bachelor degree in economics and biology at the University of California at San Diego, Revelle College. He is an avid hunter, angler, horseman and skier” states the Administration’s announcement of the appointment. Actually, this bio points out that his BS is in economics and his biological qualification is only a minor…

Commercial interests and national land set aside for nature preservation and the peaceful enjoyment of all citizens: perfect together!

A small price to pay for freedom…

I just got back from a trip out to Washington state, and while the scenery is nice, their gas prices are horrific. As much as New Jersey sucks about some things, we do have the cheapest gas in town…go us.

Nobody needs fancy research to tell them that math is the most detested subject by the American public at large. Even if you’re a fan (I am), it’s impossible not to acknowledge everyone else’s hatred of it. But if you needed proof, 4 out of 10 American adults said they hated math when they were in school, making it twice as hated as any other subject.

This isn’t just some fun anecdote. It’s a really serious problem considering we aren’t churning out enough high quality engineers to stay competitive with the rest of the world. Fortune had a great article recently on the ability of Americans to compete:

We’re not building human capital the way we used to. Our primary and secondary schools are falling behind the rest of the world’s. Our universities are still excellent, but the foreign students who come to them are increasingly taking their educations back home. As other nations multiply their science and engineering graduates—building the foundation for economic progress—ours are declining, in part because those fields are seen as nerdish and simply uncool. And our culture prizes cool.

…

Turning theory into reality is the third factor: Low-cost countries—not just China and India but also Mexico, Malaysia, Brazil, and others—are turning out large numbers of well-educated young people fully qualified to work in an information-based economy. China will produce about 3.3 million college graduates this year, India 3.1 million (all of them English-speaking), the U.S. just 1.3 million. In engineering, China’s graduates will number over 600,000, India’s 350,000, America’s only about 70,000.

Even considering that India and China have 3 or 4 times the population of the U.S., we’re still behind! Consider too that these countries haven’t even fully industrialized yet. If this is where they are today, you can bet your ass they’ll be the world’s research leaders very soon.

We need to get over this fear of math and the general disdain America has for education. It should be cool to learn, damn it. It helps your paycheck and it helps your country. Our competitiveness depends on it.

Bob Woodward of Watergate fame believes it is “highly likely” that Dick Cheney will be running for president in 2008. His reasoning (at least that given by the Denver Post article) seems pretty worthless, but let’s assume for the moment he’s right. How awesome would that be?

Consider the divisiveness inside the GOP as a war breaks out over whether or not Dick “Freedom means freedom for everyone” Cheney is socially conservative enough to represent them. Or if his ties to Halliburton are too much of a liability. Or if his poll numbers are strong enough to beat Hillary Clinton’s.

A fellow blogger who calls herself The Christian Progressive Liberal says it best, I think:

For starters, you can hang war profiteering around his neck (former CEO of Halliburton); especially if the Iraq war isn’t over, and Dubya starts conflicts with other members of the Axis of Evil (I can see Cheney pissing off North Korea as I write this).

You can tag Cheney with all the sliming of honest, ethical individuals who take a stand for what is right and tell the truth, because he’s doing it right now. You honestly think Bush is capable of such devious planning and implementation of slime and slander? Please, if you read “Bush on The Couch” by Dr. Justin Frank, you will agree with his assessment that Bush is totally incapable of intelligent thought on a long term basis. That also explains his “gut feeling” impulses versus relying on facts, logic and actually having to perform the labor of reading and comprehension.

Cheney is not a likable person. Most of us would like to think that the President is someone with a personality that actually is likeable. Even Tricky Dick Nixon was likeable, in small doses. That’s why GeeDubya was able to get public office - he knows how to schmooze and make people let down their guard to actually LIKE HIM. Can you see Dick Cheney engaging in anything warm and fuzzy, personal, intimate?

That last point is important. Everything I’ve read about George W. Bush indicates that when you’re in his presence, he’s quite likeable. So as detestable as he and his cronies may be, you can at least understand why some people are drawn to him. After all, Bill Clinton’s charisma was legendary as well. You never hear that about Dick Cheney. The guy comes off cold as ice.

So right now all I can hope is that Bob Woodward’s got another Deep Throat confirming Dick Cheney’s 2008 bid for the presidency. Once it’s confirmed, I’ll be happy to help him win the Republican nomination. In the meantime, I’ll work on Christopher Walken’s candidacy.

Thanks, but no thanks, America. Your consumer spending has kept the economy growing at a healthy clip, but now you’ve gone too far. The United States’ already pathetically low savings rate has hit 0% in June 2005, putting us on track for a year with savings below 1% (yup, that includes retirement savings such as 401(k)s). That’s the lowest since the Great Depression.

“Now wait just one FOMC meeting,” you say. “That figure doesn’t include capital gains from equities like real estate and stocks!” Right you are, but America’s irresponsible use of this equity is setting us up for disaster. People are taking out home equity loans to tap into the rising values of their houses. That’s not a horrible idea if you’re using it to make reasonable improvements to your home or some other purchase with a decent return on investment. But cars and other luxuries? Idiocy. Even worse are those who are buying their homes using interest-only loans or 105% loans because it’s all they can afford. If the house value drops in this arguably bubblicious market, you’re screwed. When interest rates go up (and they will go up), you’re screwed.

Don’t set yourself up to be screwed. You need emergency money on hand for disasters that come up. You’ll do the economy no good if you’re unable to pay your bills and file for bankruptcy (which, by the way, is harder to do now thanks to Congress). I wouldn’t be opposed to getting a home equity line of credit (HELOC) that you don’t use except in an emergency. A HELOC is like a credit card, so you’re not required to take out money like you would with a home equity loan.

And for the love of… whoever, start saving for retirement. You are a moron if your company provides a 401(k) match and you’re not participating in it. I can’t think of many things more idiotic. Young people are the worst as only 37% of those eligible for 401(k) plans take advantage of it. Unbelievable. You’d do well to start an IRA as well. I like the Roth variety as it allows tax-free withdrawals (that will be larger than the original taxed contributed amount), but there are resources out there to help you choose between the traditional and Roth IRAs. I can’t stress enough that you HAVE to start early. The earlier you start the less you have to put in later in life. If tough times prevent you from being able to contribute when you’re in your 40s, you’ll be OK because you’ve let that compounding give you a head start.

Compounding brings me to my last point, which is not to fear the stock market. I really think Democrats do a disservice when they carelessly talk about how dangerous it is for individuals to invest their Social Security money in the stock market. Mind you, I agree with them when it comes to deferring guaranteed money into personal accounts, but without clarification it sounds like they’re dismissing stocks as being too risky for retirement. WRONG! Speculation is one thing. Investment is another. The more you learn about investment and the more you learn about markets in general, the more you’ll understand why the stock market is nothing like gambling. An S&P 500 index fund is the safest bet (and outperforms the vast majority of managed funds in the long run), but if you’re willing to do the research, individual stocks can’t be beaten for return (and it’s fun).

Do America a favor. Do yourself a favor. Do your family a favor! Don’t set yourself up for disaster. Bad times will come, and you need to be prepared. I’m not trying to be alarmist here, I simply know that almost everyone encounters some financially trying situation in their lives. Plus, American economic dominance won’t last forever. Standards of living could stagnate or even retract as the global economy moves towards equilibrium. Make sure you’re living as far below your means as you can stand. You might miss out on that sexy new iPod, but you’ll thank yourself later.

I needed a new pair of glasses, and fast. On Friday, I am departing on a road trip from New Jersey to Alaska and back again, and I need a new pair of glasses, as my old pair is broken, and I can’t sleep in a car with contacts in mine eyes.

On Saturday I tried going to all of the local glasses merchants around my area in South Jerz. Blast! They were all closed for the weekend. I knew what that meant. I would have to venture to that miserable place so full with emptiness.

So I went to the mall. While waiting for my glasses to be finished (”in about an hour”), I wandered into the only place I hoped to find salvation: a bookstore. I was sadly mistaken.

This was the first time I’ve been in a mall bookstore in years. It was a frightening experience. There was a sizeable section of a wall devoted to something called “Manga”… I don’t want to know.

Classic literature was squeezed into half of a bookshelf.

On another wall was the “social science” section, which was filled with books written by politicians and other media personalities, usually with their faces bulging on the covers.

Such horrible titles, such awful mugs. But the book that really stuck out for me was the Nancy Grace book. The title: “Objection! : How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System.” And there was her face, her whole torso in fact, on the cover. She was glaring at me with her arms crossed, in a stern, damning way. She made me feel like I was guilty of something. But I began to chuckle once I realized just how silly her tough facade really was. It was marketing, clever and damn effective.

I don’t know much about Nancy Grace. Really, I know next to nothing about her. I read on the Huffington Post recently that her current talk show was beating out Larry King in the ratings.

But back to the title of the book. Isn’t she a part of that “24/7 News Media,” and does she not profit gorgeously from it? I know, not a strong criticism. But from what I’ve heard, she is the type that jumps the gun with conclusions of guilt, as in the Michael Jackson and Scott Peterson cases. I can’t imagine the rest of the 24/7 news media doing anything worse than that. It sounds like she’s really pushing the journalistic ethical envelope by being overtly partial to a particular verdict.

I’ve also gleaned from the inside pocket of her book that Grace is a strong “victims’ rights” advocate. This may help explain why she could be so in favor of finding people guilty before a trial’s conclusion. I have not done any scholarly (or non-scholarly) research on the topic of victims’ rights. But ignorance has never stopped me before:

Victims should not have “rights” in a criminal proceeding, in the usual sense. They don’t need rights to be protected. Penal law is supposed to take care of that. Criminal defendants, however, do very much need rights, and they are so granted by the Constitution, as well as by other common law court rules and legislation.

Perhaps a victim should have the right to influence prosecutorial discretion and other areas of law enforcement. If a legislature believes that a victim should be allowed to push for the state to take action, I see no problem with that. Victims should also be adequately protected from vengeful defendents.

Some jurisdictions allow the families of murder victims to testify, usually during sentencing I believe. This practice is a little questionable. Should the decision maker, whether judge or jury, be irrationally swayed by raw emotion that has no relevance to the merits of the case? Here’s a way to look at it: should a murderer get a worse sentence for killing a person with a family than for killing a person without one?

I’m sure there are many other legitimate issues on which victims’ rights advocates are taking a proper stand. But I would like to see victims’ rights advocates focus their efforts on curbing a bigger problem: overzealous law enforcement. Do they already address this? I guess its possible. But getting back to Nancy Grace, I have a feeling that most folks who talk the “victims’ rights” talk don’t really have this in mind. Why is overzealous law enforcement a problem for victims? I’ll put it this way: a victim gets just as much out of an acquittal of a truly guilty defendant as they do out of a conviction of a falsely-identified defendant. They get nothing. In the latter circumstance, a victim or a victim’s family may believe for years that justice was done, only to discover later that they were never so avenged, compounded with the tragedy of knowing an innocent person has been so grossly abused.

In a stingingly sarcastic post, Mithras writes about just such a case. It appears that the cops corralled multiple rape victims into pointing the finger at the wrong guy. Many years later, DNA evidence tells another story.

At his trial, his lawyers put on a weak defense. First, his co-workers testified that he was at work as a cook when the rapes occurred. Obviously, they are all lying, because people who work with rapists lie like that. And they said that if the rapist had left work and committed the rapes like the prosecution contended, he would smell strongly of the grease and onions of the kitchen, and none of the victims had noticed such a smell. Obviously, Mr. Diaz, who is believed to be not white, had learned in non-white rapist school how to remove the smell from himself while on the way home from his job. Finally, the lying liar defense lawyers pointed out that Mr. Diaz was shorter and weighed less than the person in the descriptions of the rapist provided by all of the victims. Obviously, Diaz could also control his height and weight with his mind. Diabolical.

Fortunately, the court did not believe the rapist Diaz and his lying lawyers and witnesses and evidence. The judge said, “I’ve never seen a case where I was more convinced of a man’s guilt.” Heh. Indeed.

The lying liberal New York Times then prints this:

One victim, whose identification of Mr. Diaz led to his arrest, said she had originally thought none of the men in the nine photographs she was shown resembled her attacker. She had asked to see more pictures, she said, but settled on Mr. Diaz after the police twice told her to keep looking at the first batch. He was the only one who remotely looked like the attacker, she said.

“They told me to look closer at the ones I had,” she told a state prosecutor in 1993, adding that the police were watching her study the photos “almost like people holding their breath.”

So, the police were just being helpful. The police are always helpful in identifying the guilty, and witnesses should listen to them. If a police officer says he thinks someone did it, then they probably did it. The fact that Diaz got convicted after the police did this proves they were right.

This victim said she grew more convinced that Mr. Diaz was her attacker when she “shook like a leaf” upon seeing him in a live lineup.

“All these girls couldn’t be wrong, the detectives couldn’t be wrong, it couldn’t go this far,” she recalled thinking.

See??? Once the police had corrected the victim’s faulty memory, she became more and more sure Diaz was the one. They cleared up her doubts for her. They smiled and patted her on the back when she picked the right guy. They’re the good guys.

Nancy Grace appears to be the kind of person to jump the gun on declarations of guilt. This is anything but a service to victims. And according to a customer review of her book on Amazon.com by one “Tom Roberts”, she has been found by courts to have engaged in unethical behavior in her days as a prosecutor (I would corroborate, but hell, he has a case citation!). The reviewer writes:

Since leaving the prosecutor’s office, Nancy Grace has been sharply repremanded by three different appeals courts for unethical and illegal behavior while she was a prosecutor. Her behavior was called illegal by every judge on the Georgia Supreme Court. Georgia is not exactly a friendly place for criminal defense and the lengths the court went in calling out Nancy Grace for ethical violations was very unusual.

They said she:

- Misrepresented facts to the trial judge so that her out of state witness could access the defendants home without the knowledge of the defense. Her witness gained access by breaking down the front door. For good measure, she subsequently also entered the defendants home with CNN cameras.

- Outright misrepresented the testimony of witnesses (falsely indicating in her closing argument that a defense witness had not disagreed with an opinion of the state).

- She inserted false information regarding hearing dates into a court proceeding to gain an advantage.

- She repeatedly ignored the instructions of the court. For example, she made multiple references to issues in her opening statement that the court had ruled (previously) to be inadmissiable.

- She failed to disclose a romantic relationship she knew about between two of her witnesses to the defense. She deliberatly held back her full witness list until the start of the trial.

For those interested, the case was: Carr v. State, 267 Ga. 701, 482 S.E.2d 314 (1997). Its a very detailed case study in how Nancy Grace abused her power as a prosecutor and how she operated without any real sort of ethics.

The court summarized her conduct in really harsh language:
begin quote -

Our review of the record supports Carr’s contention that the prosecuting attorney engaged in an extensive pattern of inappropriate and, in some cases, illegal conduct in the course of the trial.

end quote -

This isn’t one bad judge, its the entire very conservative usually pro prosection Georgia Supreme Court giving that opinion.

And the title of her book attacks “high priced defense attorneys” that have “hijacked our criminal justice system”? The reviewer continues:

Its also important to remember that the person involved is free today only because he was rich and had the money to hire the lawyers to fight back against what she was trying to do. Most people would have ended up in jail for the rest of their lives.

I’m sorry, I couldn’t resist the trend. And this weekend is the last chance I’ll get to do this, as I’m moving back to the city and the dog stays here with my family.

I try not to read corporate news, but I have noticed many a headline about a methamphetamine epidemic.

Bullshit? Maybe there are lotsa people cooking it up and using. But according to a Slate article by Jack Shafer (via the Drug Policy Alliance’s blog), there are some facts and issues that have gone unaddressed that are essential to understanding the harm of this epidemic and its historical context:

Some highlights:

if meth is America’s most dangerous drug, how many people has it killed? Newsweek doesn’t bother to explore the topic, perhaps because it’s so hard to pin down…If meth is really the most dangerous drug, you’d think the magazine would have provided some sort of body count.
[snip]
In 1965, the federal government tried to reduce the flow of legal amphetamines into the black market by passing the Federal Drug Abuse Control Amendments, but the law had an unintended effect…By cutting the legal supply to a trickle, the government signaled to drug dealers–and would-be drug dealers–that they could collect substantial profits from an established clientele if they started manufacturing amphetamines.
[snip]
In the mid-1960s, just before the government declared war on amphetamines, the average user swallowed his pills, which were of medicinal purity and potency. Snorting and smoking stimulants was almost unheard of, and very few users injected intravenously. Today, 40 years later, snorting, smoking, and injecting methamphetamines of unpredictable potency and dubious purity has become the norm–with all the dreadful health consequences. If the current scene illustrates how the government is winning the war on drugs, I’d hate to see what losing looks like.

Mike of Crime and Federalism blog shows us, with the help of a NYTimes article, one of the consequences of the meth hysteria and the resulting political pressure on the Administration, and by extension, law enforcement:

Think fast: What does it mean to “finish up a cook.” Too late: You’re under arrest.

That’s what several federal police officers said to Indian immigrants whose English-speaking skills, yet alone knowledge of slang, was imperfect.

The NY Times article:

When [federal prosecutors] charged 49 convenience store clerks and owners in rural northwest Georgia with selling materials used to make methamphetamine, federal prosecutors declared that they had conclusive evidence. Hidden microphones and cameras, they said, had caught the workers acknowledging that the products would be used to make the drug.

But weeks of court motions have produced many questions. Forty-four of the defendants are Indian immigrants - 32, mostly unrelated, are named Patel - and many spoke little more than the kind of transactional English mocked in sitcoms.

So when a government informant told store clerks that he needed the cold medicine, matches and camping fuel to “finish up a cook,” some of them said they figured he must have meant something about barbecue.

The Agitator knows the reason why there is an uptick in homegrown meth usage. Its the same reason folks used to make moonshine, and its one reason why we today have such a rich variety of cocktails:

A smart reporter, for example, might ask why we have meth in the first place. Could it be because more traditional amphetamines and narcotics are harder to get, thanks in large part to the Drug War? He might ask Drug War opponents if they feel the meth scare is as potent and widespread as media reports and drug warriors suggest. He doesn’t have to endorse these ideas. But he ought to at least give them some space.

. . . .

While talking about drug prohibition and the rash of meth stories, a reporter yesterday asked me if I would “even legalize meth.”

I think that’s a poor way of framing the question. It would be like asking an opponent of alcohol prohibition in, say, 1927 a question like, “would you even legalize bathtub gin, which is dangerously potent, and sometimes lethal?”

It’s not a fair question. Were it not for the Drug War, we wouldn’t have meth. Were it not for Prohibition, we’d never have had people drinking wood alcohol or bathtub gin. Both were created by prohibition. Both would soon go away if we adopted more sensible policies.

Humans will always want to get high, and they will always succeed, no matter how injurious to our bodies.

So let’s not only save money, but make money. We set up a government monopoly on the drug trade, and undercut any potential black market. We can eliminate the DEA. We can free up police departments to investigate real crimes. And there will be far less crime to investigate, as we will eliminate all drug-related violence and crime (no need to battle for territory, no need to mug people for money, etc.). We can stop building prisons. We can stop spraying fields (and poisoning humans) in South America. We can put the money into substantial support for those who go astray. Its utilitarian! Oy, I’ll save the moral argument for decriminalization for another day.

But these ideas are nothing new. We’ve seen the problems inherent in prohibition in the past. And we’ve been through it with drugs for a long enough time that there shouldn’t be any more doubt about the massive utilitarian benefits to a controlled decriminalization of currently illegal drugs. I just feel these ideas need repeating, as its obvious we still haven’t caught on.

I just stumbled upon a little post on Pandagon by Jesse Taylor about a topic I love to complain about; the corporate media’s concept of “debate.” Here is a big chunk of the post:

I’m currently watching a Bill Schneider piece on creationism/ID, and even as he covers polling on the issue, I’m made well aware why most people don’t think it’s a problem.

Schneider’s continual reference to the debate is “teaching both sides” and/or “teaching different viewpoints”. Never is the validity of the idea brought up, or any educational background about what the purpose of science is. Daryn Kagan just asked the anti-dumbass guy what the problem was with presenting “other ideas” in schools, and it’s obvious she has about as much background on the question as I do on Bolivian economics.

It’s emblematic of just how ridiculously poorly equipped the media is to host any real debate on controversial issues, particularly when one side is being patently dishonest.

Atrios agrees in this post:

Kudos to our wonderful media for treating this as a he said/she said issue, where one side is the entire legitimate scientific community and the other side consists of a bunch of good Christian liars trying to dress their religion up as science. They tried once before with “Creation Science” and now they’re trying again with “Intelligent Design.”

I wrote a long comment with a similar sentiment under Melissa’s excellent post on No Child Left Behind from back in the infancy (a few months ago) of this blog. I dig on Jeff Greenfield (in a hypothetical manner) instead of Bill Schneider, but either will do. I also point out how such reporting tends to support PR-driven, contrived, and empty policy, as well as PR-driven, contrived, empty politicians. Here’s what I wrote in full (though not very well written… hey, it was just a comment):

I know little about the details and intricacies of NCLB. But I suspect the entire legislation is nothing more than a ruse. For what purpose? So Bush/Republicans/Etc. can claim that they passed legislation to help our educational system (with a soft and fuzzy Orwellian name they can repeat over and over again). It is an accomplishment they can read off on 30 second ads and campaign stops devoid of criticism. Thus, no need to actually fund the program and raise taxes.

Once we get into the lack of funding and the need to raise governmental revenues (or reappropriate them) to support NCLB, the conversation gets too long and complex for corporate media to discuss. There are too many issues. First, NCLB itself has serious problems (as raised by this article), but I’m sure a talking head can blabber good things about it for several minutes on CNN. Accountability? Good. We shouldn’t waste money on failing schools, we owe it to the children, etc etc. Then the Democrat can either raise excellent (and fairly obvious) criticisms or, in many cases, agree. Secondly, the Democrat or journalist will ask about funding NCLB. That opens the door to finger pointing between Democrats and Republicans. The Republican will say it is possible to cut more taxes and still fund education. Democrats will say we can’t cut anymore taxes, but won’t dare say that we need to raise them (and will instead criticise tax cuts already made), and then say that NCLB is an unfunded mandate. And since the corporate media prefers to report on politics as strategic battles rather than as debates on policies, this finger-pointing will be encouraged. Then Jeff Greenfield will talk about how interesting it is that the Republicans take X strategy and the Democrats take Y strategy. He’ll then speculate about how the American people will react to parties’s stances on the issue, rather than provide meaningful analysis of the policies and facts behind the debate.

Jeff Greenfield and his ilk are simply sports commentators, treating political parties like teams. There could be a role for this commentary, if success in politics was an accurate reflection of a party’s ability to apprise and address the real needs and desires of the people. But when success in politics is the result of PR (propaganda) and ignorance, then we cannot treat politics like a sporting event, as parties may be successful because of their ability to dupe people or make them apathetic.

But in the end, the Republicans get to say they passed legislation to reform and save our educational system. Kids may learn less because of it, but knowing why takes analysis. I [hope] we figure it out before the consequences on our society make it clear.

All it would take is a little analysis from the corporate media to discredit idiotic policy positions. Then we can focus debates appropriately between mutually credible policy positions. A debate between Intelligent Design Theory vs. evolution, for example, could be replaced by one of the following:
-evolution theorists debating the merits of the completeness of the theory (or perhaps serious alternative theories, if they exist)
-deep criticism of the Intelligent Design Theory (and other superstitions), as a public service
-sociological study of proponents and advocates of intelligent design theory, and of other folks who struggle so ferociously against overwhelming evidence… what makes them tick?

This is not to say people can’t continue to believe in creationism. Lets just not pretend that it has anything to do with science. Atrios says it nicely in the same entry linked above… it made me go back and capitalize “intelligent design” in this post:

Obviously most people who believe in some form of supreme deity are lowercase intelligent design believers of some kind, but that’s entirely different from being believers in the “science” of uppercase Intelligent Design. People are free to believe, if they wish, that aspects of the universe including life suggest to them the presence of some form of divine hand. But that’s spirituality and faith, not science. There is no genuine science of Intelligent Design and it has no place in science classrooms.

And isn’t faith most pure where proof is most lacking? Let’s not forget this passage from The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy about the Babel Fish:

Now it is such a bizarrely impossible coincidence that anything so mind-bogglingly useful could have evolved purely by chance that some thinkers have chosen to see it as a final and clinching proof of the nonexistence of God. The argument goes something like this:

“I refuse to prove that I exist,” says God, “for proof denies faith, and without faith I am nothing.”

“But,” says Man, “the Babel fish is a dead giveaway, isn’t it? It could not have evolved by chance. It proves you exist, and so therefore, by your own arguments, you don’t. QED.”

“Oh dear,” says God, “I hadn’t though of that” and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic.

UPDATE, 8/4/05:

I just love to link to other bloggers who are thinking similarly and at the same time, as you can see. The Babel Fish problem of proof and faith is a perfect segway into this post from the Big Brass Blog:

But what lies as the root cause of religious extremism? Lack of faith.

That’s right, lack of faith. The zealots in this country, and throughout the world, who must wear their religion on their sleeves, have every aspect of their lives dosed with religion and feel the need to not only believe for themselves, but to take everyone along with them or else, clearly are suffering from a serious lack of faith.

What else can explain the need to constantly shove their religion into everyone else’s lives? They have such a fragile system of faith that they must constantly say “look at me, I believe in God, I am pious and you are a sinner, and either you will observe my way or you are going to hell!”

Of course, one might argue that these extremists are trying to save us from damnation. But naaah…

Those who try to push religion into other people’s lives probably often suffer from a lack of faith, as BBB suggests. I think part it may also be a misconception about faith, that is, they mistakenly think they need to see earthly manifestations of “God’s will.” If this is their conception, then their faith is certainly lacking.

But insecurity plays a big roll. Those who try so forcefully to mold and indoctrinate our society may be subconsciously aiming to satisfy their own religious and personal insecurities by their efforts. They may satisfy their religious insecurities by seeing that more and more people have similar beliefs. And they may satisfy their personal insecurities with feelings of empowerment, achieved by turning themselves into activists, leaders, recruiters, martyrs, etc… the more extreme, the better.

We may all be a bit guilty of this when it comes to politics, debate, and activism, even when we have truth and logic on our side. Perhaps that’s part of the reason why we write this blog. But we differ in that we have faith in the strength of our positions; we have faith that our ideas will emerge victorious from the marketplace of ideas when given their fair hearing.

Most religious people know that their religions do get a fair hearing in our society; in churches, communities, traditions, and culture. They know that their religions cannot stand up to evolution in scientific validity, and they know that science alone cannot satisfy their deep feelings of spirituality. So they recognize that both science and religion will benefit most by discussing them separately in different physical and intellectual venues.

Damn, this post was supposed to be about corporate media and debate.

UPDATE, 8/5/05:

The post that never ends!

Shakespeare’s Sister now takes the reigns, bringing mindless supporters of the President into the fold.

John Kerry said he believes in God (and attends church more frequently than the president), and didn’t seem afraid to say it; so what’s the difference? Every friggin’ president we’ve ever had has been a Christian believer in God (and not afraid to say it). So what makes this guy so different? Isn’t it really that he’s willing to push a very particular Christian agenda down the nation’s collective throat? Isn’t it that he espouses (if not overtly, then through his policy endorsements) a superiority of that particular Christian doctrine over other Christian beliefs, other religions, agnosticism, and atheism? Isn’t it his willingness to subjugate science, reason, the rule of law, fairness, justice, and equality to give ever greater rights to your existing majority, while indulging your screeching assertions of victimhood?

I wrote about how the insecure-religious need to see that other people share their religiosity. I called this their “religious” insecurity, that is, their lack of faith. But Shakespeare’s Sister points out how John Kerry and just about every other candidate display their religiosity as overtly as Bush. So why don’t they support Kerry, et. al.? Maybe Shakespeare’s Sister is partially wrong… Bush may simply go further than other candidates; “Jesus Christ” as his favorite philosopher is one example. But Shakespeare’s Sister hits a more important reason why the extremists support Bush: his attempts to push and promote religion, and arguably religious ideals, through public policy. This is how Bush appeals to the other insecurity I wrote about: “personal” insecurity. It is not enough for the extremists to think Bush agrees with their religion. They want Bush to answer to them. By trying to “push a very particular Christian agenda down the nation’s collective throat,” Bush reinforces the extremists’ false feelings of personal superiority. And the more he “subjugate[s] science, reason, the rule of law, fairness, justice, and equality,” the more he validates the extremists’ feelings and satiates their insecurities.

I know, the horse is dead, I shall refrain from beating.