Oops.

Remember Helen Thomas' retirement from Hearst Corporation back in June?

Remember Shirley Sherrod's forced resignation from USDA back in July?

Some writers are comparing these cases to the case of Juan Williams, with mixed results.

Parvez Ahmed writes:

Let us get one thing correct -- Helen Thomas, Rick Sanchez, Octavia Nasr and Juan Williams are neither racists nor bigots. By all accounts they are good journalists. But by expressing negative stereotypes about a racial or religious group they are guilty of breaching the ethics of fairness, crucial ingredients to succeed in journalism. Thus their forced resignation or firing from Hearst, CNN and NPR respectively is the right action. Having publicly expressed their biases they could no longer be viewed has having the credibility to be impartial arbiters of news.

In June, I wrote, "I invite anyone to explain to me why Thomas ought to have resigned for her comments." In fact, the title of my post was, "Helen Thomas lost her job for this?" Ahmed has given me the explanation I requested. I was emphasizing the fact that Thomas's speech was legitimately political and not bigoted. The comments that got Williams in trouble, on the other hand, were. So I believe that Williams' speech was worse than Thomas'. But Ahmed is right. As a journalist, Thomas ought to have been fired, and Hearst had every right to do so. I screwed up. Consistency demands that I admit my error here, and I do.

Slate's William Saletan compares Williams to Sherrod:

Three months ago, right-wingers clipped a video of Sherrod to make her look like a racist. They circulated the video on the Internet, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture fired her. 

Now it's happening again. This time, left-wingers have done the editing. They clipped a video of Juan Williams, a commentator for Fox News and NPR, to make him look like an anti-Muslim bigot. They circulated the video on the Internet, and last night, NPR fired him.

Saletan came out against the firing of Sherrod in July, and now he comes out against the firing of Williams. Saletan writes:

The damning video clip of Williams, like the damning clip of Sherrod, cuts off the speaker just as he's about to reverse course. According to the full transcript, immediately after saying, "I don't think there's any way to get away from these facts," Williams continues: "But I think there are people who want to somehow remind us all as President Bush did after 9/11, it's not a war against Islam." That continuation has been conveniently snipped from the excerpt.

If Williams is guilty of anything, according to Saletan, it is for expressing his fears. Saletan writes: 

But admitting such fears doesn't make you a bigot. Sometimes, to work through your fears, you have to face them honestly. You have to think through the perils of acting on those fears. And you have to explain to others why they, too, should transcend their anxieties or resentments and treat people as individuals.

That's what Shirley Sherrod did in her speech to the NAACP. It's what Juan Williams did in his interview on Fox News. 

There are significant differences between these two cases, however. 

• The irrational fears Sherrod confessed to having were fears she had many years ago; Williams confessed to having irrational fears now. 
• NPR was well within its rights to fire Williams; since Sherrod's bigoted actions occurred so long ago, it's not clear that USDA was justified in firing her. 
• It is abundantly clear that Sherrod is a reformed bigot; it is not so clear in the case of Williams. Everyone is familiar with the phenomenon of bigots taking back their bigotry in the same breath in which they express it. Williams appears to be a bigot in spite of himself. It may be that we're all bigots. But we are smart enough to combat our own bigotry, and we can certainly avoid expressing it in public. Universal bigotry is no excuse for bigotry. 

In addition, it's not clear that putting Williams' comment in context helps. Even if Williams recognizes the irrationality of his bigotry, as the rest of the segment suggests, that doesn't show that he is not a bigot. Saletan admits as much in his defense of him. Saletan denies that Williams' fears are bigoted, I know, but he is simply wrong about that. 

But the fact that Williams is a bigot is not, strictly speaking, the real problem here anyway. The problem is that Williams chose to express his bigotry in a public forum. He didn't have to work through his fears in front of who knows how many viewers of The O'Reilly Factor. As a journalist, he should have done that in private. No one had a gun to his head, and there was plenty of material from the preceding Talking Points segment to talk about without confessing to this or that irrational fear. 

I have a great amount of respect for Saletan and the high quality of his work for Slate. On this one rare occasion, unfortunately, he dropped the ball. We all do at some point. 

The Other Side of the Story

So why did NPR fire Juan Williams?

According to NPR chief executive Vivian Schiller,

The reason that we terminated his contract is because of our news ethics guidelines.

The guidelines are based on the same news ethics guidelines of the Society of Professional Journalists, and are very similar to that of The New York Times and many other news organizations.

According to the SPJ Code of Ethics,

Journalists should . . . Avoid stereotyping by race, gender, age, religion, ethnicity, geography, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance or social status.

In addition, Schiller claims that Williams "had several times in the past violated our news code of ethics with things that he had said on other people’s air." And

We made the decision here because, at a certain point, if someone keeps not following your guidance, you have to make a break. And that’s what we did. And that is the sole reason.

Fox "News" and the conservative blogosphere is trying, once again, to blow this out of proportion, for political purposes, of course.

In reaction to the firing, Williams appears to be saying, "Fuck the code of ethics! I'll say whatever I please!"

And that's why you're at Fox, Juan—right where you belong.

More thoughts on the firing of Juan Williams from NPR

Here are my reactions to passages from an Associated Press story "Gone From NPR, Williams Begins Bigger Role On Fox."

According to the AP, during his appearance on The O'Reilly Factor Friday, 

Williams went on to note that commentator Nina Totenberg said 15 years ago that if there is "retributive justice," former Republican North Carolina Sen. Jesse Helms or one of his grandchildren will get AIDS from a transfusion.

An NPR spokeswoman said Totenberg has repeatedly apologized for her comments. 

I'm not a huge Totenberg fan myself, but there is a significant difference between her case and that of Williams: Totenberg apologized for her comments, and Williams has not. My guess is that conservative bloggers (like this lunatic) fail to mention this fact. 

The AP also reports that 

Veronica Richardson, 38, a paralegal from Raleigh, N.C., said the firing revealed that NPR had a "political agenda." She said she would stop listening and donating to her local station, WUNC-FM in Chapel Hill. 

"I think it's unfair to fire someone for a comment that was innocuous to begin with. It's how many people feel," said Richardson, who describes herself as a libertarian. 

Richardson's problem is that Williams' comment was not "innocuous to begin with." It had the effect of legitimizing Bill O'Reilly's irrational fear of Muslims. Before you conclude that such comments are harmless, perhaps you ought to get to know a few American Muslims and ask them about it. In addition, bigotry is not a legitimate "political agenda," and neither is firing those who express it. Bigotry is rooted in ignorance of non-political matters; reforming bigots is therefore not political. 

Finally, according to the AP, 

Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., said he will introduce legislation to end federal funding for public radio and television. 

"Once again, we find the only free speech liberals support is the speech with which they agree," he said in a statement. "With record debt and unemployment, there's simply no reason to force taxpayers to subsidize a liberal programming they disagree with."

Liberals like me have been saying that conservatives' irrational fear of Muslims is bigotry. I do in fact disagree with Williams' comments, but not because I am a liberal. I disagree with Williams' comments because they are rooted in ignorance about factual matters. And I don't care whether most Americans agree with Williams or not. Their agreement with him wouldn't make his comments any less false. Conservatives have a long history of using propaganda, including false propaganda, to further their political goals. And if DeMint want to ally himself with bigots, he can be my guest. 

DeMint also assumes that NPR can air only those views with which Americans agree. Think about that. He assumes not only that the airing of minority opinions on NPR is forbidden, but also that Americans agree with him. This is a conservative delusion in the Obama era: that the conservative wing of the Republican Party is representative of Americans in general, and that Obama and the Democrats are ignoring the will of the American people. DeMint, and the rest of them, are out of their fucking minds. Andrew Sullivan writes: 

"A convenient Tea Party mantra has been the presumptuous, and seemingly amnesiac notion that President Obama 'betrayed the American people,' that 'We the People have spoken and never wanted Obama’s policies.'" . . .

I have one loyal and valuable reader who keeps going nuts about the health insurance bill being rammed down the throats of the country.

But Obama explicitly campaigned on it; it was never hidden; he didn't change it significantly from his final campaign message (although he opposed mandates in the primaries). It was fought over in the presidential debates. And he won the election by a landslide on that platform. And he passed it after months of Congressional wrangling. There was nothing faintly wrong or treacherous or deceptive about any of it.

Jim, I understand your political reasons for doing what you're doing, but to many of us, you sound about as insane as Erick Erickson. Your contact with reality is tenuous at best. Take your meds. 

The Radical Theology of Erick Erickson

I know that I already talked about this, but I have a few more things to say. 

RedState's Erick Erickson found a way to make the following remarks in a post about Juan Williams:

The most significant truth is that had Juan Williams made his comments about Christians or Jews he would still have his job. The world is at war with Christ and, more generally, the Judeo-Christian God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Islam, derived from a man of this world, and the world are in supernatural alliance against Christ. This is the moment non-believers laugh and believers nod knowingly.

The secular world hates the real God of the Bible and those who follow Christ. Any group that is not of Christ or allied with Christ is spared by the world because it is of the world. Any group of Christ or allied with Christ is fair game for attack and ridicule.

Christians are aliens in this world and ultimately, on the last day, win. But until then, the world hates them.

In the same post, Erickson provides a laundry list of unkind words uttered by present and former NPR staffers about certain Christians. He then writes:

NPR would never, nor would any other network, say anything similar about Islam or any group perceived to be a victim group. Superficially, this is because the left has unyielding sympathy for victim groups, whether or not they actually are real victims. It is how the left can embrace tolerance for both gays and muslims though many of the latter would gladly see all of the former put the death.

One of the myths promulgated by conservatives these days is that liberals like me kowtow to Muslims and to any group conservatives perceive as being hostile to Christians and Christianity. Let's set the record straight, shall we? Christians are not a "victim group" in this country. Christians are doing just fine. I know a lot of you Christians might find that shocking, but it's true. When was the last time someone told you that you'll just have to build your church somewhere else, out of sympathy for the feelings of those who dare not be Christian? When was the last time you were prohibited from reading your Bible, or going to church, or watching religious programming on television? The left has sympathy for "victim groups" because the left, unlike the right, actually takes rights seriously. Christians don't have to worry about threats to their right to worship; Muslims do. If anyone has a right to worship, everyone does, including Muslims. (Obviously, this does not mean that religious people can do whatever they want, so anyone out there itching to interpret my words in the least charitable way should forget about it.) I find Islam just as annoying and ridiculous as Christianity or any other religion. But I believe in everyone's right to self-determination, and that extends to religious matters.

What is most disturbing about Erickson's comments is the extremism inherent in them. In Erickson's world, there are only Christians and those who are at war with them. You're either with the Christians or you're with their enemies. Since I am not a Christian, I have entered into a "supernatural alliance against Christ." (I don't recall doing that, actually.) And since the religious right speaks for Christians, either I accept everything they say, or I am their mortal enemy. There is no middle ground: if I argue for the religious freedom of anyone who isn't a Christian, then I am at war with Christ. This is just the kind of extremist thinking that gets holy wars going. Let me say that again: this is just the kind of extremist thinking that gets holy wars going. People like Erickson pose a far greater threat to this world than atheists do.

Erickson thinks of himself as a Christian. I think of him as a lunatic.

This is where the party ends

Juan Williams

The people at Fox "News" are devoting a lot of airtime to Juan Williams lately.

As you've probably heard, National Public Radio fired Williams for the comments he made about Muslims on The O'Reilly Factor. Williams said:

I'm not a bigot. You know the kind of books I've written about the civil rights movement in this country. But when I get on the plane, I got to tell you, if I see people who are in Muslim garb and I think, you know, they are identifying themselves first and foremost as Muslims, I get worried. I get nervous.

According to NPR, "Williams also warned O'Reilly against blaming all Muslims for 'extremists,' saying Christians shouldn't be blamed for Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh." But it wasn't enough. The damage had been done. As They Might Be Giants sang, you can't shake the devil's hand and then say you're only kidding.

Andrew Sullivan hit the nail on the head. In response to Williams's assertion that he is not a bigot, Sullivan writes:

What if someone said that they saw a black man walking down the street in classic thug get-up. Would a white person be a bigot of he assumed he was going to mug him? What percentage of traditionally garbed Muslims - I assume wearing a covered veil or some other indicator and being of darker skin - have committed acts of terror? And, of course, the 9/11 mass-murderers were in everyday attire, to blend in. So was the Christmas Day undie-bomber. The Fort Hood murderer was in US military uniform, for Pete's sake. 

How did Fox "News" react to Williams's remarks? They gave him a new contract with a raise and an expanded role in their entertainment division.

Conservatives, naturally, are upset by NPR's move. According to The Los Angeles Times,

By midafternoon Thursday, more than 4,900 comments had been posted on NPR.org, including many from people who said the media organization was bowing to political correctness and unfairly punishing Williams for expressing his personal opinions.

An apoplectic Michelle Malkin is calling for public funding of NPR to be cut. In another post, Malkin defended Williams on the grounds that he was merely giving "his honest opinion," claimed that "NPR has apparently caved into left-wing attack dogs on the Internet," and asserted that "NPR has undermined whatever credibility it had left with this boneheaded capitulation."

So why did NPR fire Williams? What is their side of the story? According to a statement issued by NPR, "[Williams's] remarks on The O'Reilly Factor this past Monday were inconsistent with our editorial standards and practices, and undermined his credibility as a news analyst with NPR."

Why are conservatives so upset and liberals unconcerned about Williams's firing? Williams's remarks were bigoted. And bigotry is a sign of ignorance. Civilized people don't tolerate bigotry when its targets are African-Americans or Latinos or Christians and so on. Bigotry is no more tolerable when its target is Muslims. Without the ignorance bigotry needs to flourish, there is no uproar over a planned Islamic community center near Ground Zero in New York City. Conservative media outlets exploit ignorance to accomplish their political goals as they did in the case of the so-called Ground Zero mosque. Inside actual news organizations like NPR, however, ignorance is a serious liability. I am willing to bet that NPR listeners have much less tolerance for ignorance than do Fox "News" viewers. Williams showed his ignorance and it cost him; Fox "News," however, rewarded it.

And that brings us to Malkin. She may think that NPR's credibility is undermined by this move. She is wrong for two reasons. First, NPR has no credibility with conservative nit-wits like Malkin, so they had none to lose with Malkin by firing Williams to begin with. Second, NPR's move actually enhanced their credibility: it sent the message that the people who work for NPR must be smart enough not to be bigots and reassured their listeners that the kind of propaganda one typically gets from Fox "News" and the people who promulgate it will not be tolerated at NPR.

Conservatives claimed that the opinions of those opposed to the planned mosque were valid, and that sensitivity demanded that we take them seriously. Malkin appears to think that we need to take Williams's opinions seriously as well. She complains that Williams was fired because he "committed the deadly sin of expressing public concern about traveling with 'people who are in Muslim garb.'" Both Williams and opponents of the planned mosque have been victims of political correctness, according to conservatives. But what's really going on here? They plead for sensitivity to the feelings of those victimized on 9/11; they plead for tolerance for Williams's bigoted views. But what about sensitivity to the feelings of Muslims wrongly vilified by Williams? What about sensitivity to the feelings of Muslims wrongly vilified by those opposed to the planned mosque? Many conservatives are bigots: they believe in their hearts that Islam is evil and Muslims are to be feared. Why wouldn't they? That's what their trusted media outlets have been telling them for years. And that, again, is why the firing of Williams has made them so upset. To them, Williams speaks the truth.

Malkin quotes Thomas Jefferson as saying, "To compel a man to furnish funds for the propagation of ideas he disbelieves and abhors is sinful and tyrannical." While Malkin wants her tax dollars spent on airing bigoted views, I think we can aim higher. Not all opinions are equal. Williams's opinions are based in ignorance, as are the feelings of those opposed to the planned mosque. These opinions have as much right to be taken seriously as do the opinions of astrologers and alchemists.

I'm also not buying the argument that firing Williams is an infringement on his right to free speech. He has a new expanded platform on Fox "News" to say what he wants. And how long would a Fox "News" personality remain on the air if she asserted that, say, George W. Bush is a war criminal, or Republican thinking about the deficit is divorced from reality, or that global climate change is unquestionably real and caused by human beings, or that God doesn't exist? Not long.

Update. I wrote above that "Civilized people don't tolerate bigotry when its targets are African-Americans or Latinos or Christians and so on." RedState's Erick Erickson has a different view of things:

The most significant truth is that had Juan Williams made his comments about Christians or Jews he would still have his job. The world is at war with Christ and, more generally, the Judeo-Christian God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Islam, derived from a man of this world, and the world are in supernatural alliance against Christ. This is the moment non-believers laugh and believers nod knowingly.

The secular world hates the real God of the Bible and those who follow Christ. Any group that is not of Christ or allied with Christ is spared by the world because it is of the world. Any group of Christ or allied with Christ is fair game for attack and ridicule.

Christians are aliens in this world and ultimately, on the last day, win. But until then, the world hates them.

All right. Let me just say this first, and get it off of my chest: Erick Erickson is out of his fucking mind.

That's better. Now, then. Erickson sees the world as a battlefield on which followers of the Judeo-Christian God are at war with everyone else. Here's the deal: I am as secular as they come, and I don't hate God or Christians. The problem is that far too many Christians are complete assholes, and I just want to be left alone. I don't want to be indoctrinated into your faith, and I don't want you forcing me to live by your rules. And it would be really swell if far fewer Christians were hypocrites. Your problem, Erick, is that many people who profess to be Christians are actually more morally corrupt than many atheists. That would explain a lot of the abuse you folks are experiencing. So work on that, all right?

And I'm not too stupid to see that you are furthering the myth that Christians are persecuted in this country, when in reality they're running the fucking show, and making it unpleasant to be an atheist. And I can also see that furthering that myth helps you achieve your political goals. Just thought you should know.

Don't be stupid

Lori Ziganto, "NOW Rewards Sexism; Strengthens Jerry Brown’s Pimp Hand With Endorsement":

A mere 24 hours after Jerry Brown was caught calling Meg Whitman, his opponent in the race for California Governor, a “whore”, [the National Organization for Women] endorsed him. 

Lori Ziganto, "The Anti-Women Left Falls Back On Sexual Slurs And Dehumanization":

Kirsten Powers attended the panel I was on, called Feminism 2.0, the New Face of Feminism, with Jenn Q. Public and Pamela Gorman, moderated by Adrienne Royer. While Kirsten is an unabashed liberal and likely disagrees with us on most policy points, she listened and understood the vile hatred toward conservative women that comes out of the Left. Her article at the Daily Beast today reflects that. She touched on some examples, including the most recent one whereby Jerry Brown called Meg Whitman “a whore.”  

The Los Angeles Times, "An associate of Jerry Brown calls Meg Whitman a 'whore' over pension reform" (i.e., the story cited by Ziganto as evidence that Brown called Whitman a whore):

In a private conversation that was inadvertently taped by a voicemail machine (audio below), an associate of Democratic gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown can be heard referring to his Republican opponent Meg Whitman as a “whore” for cutting a deal protecting law enforcement pensions as the two candidates competed for police endorsements.

The comment came after Brown called the Los Angeles Police Protective League in early September to ask for its endorsement. He left a voicemail message for Scott Rate, a union official. Brown apparently believed he had hung up the phone, but the connection remained intact and the voice mail machine captured an ensuing conversation between Brown and his aides.

With evident frustration, Brown discussed the pressure he was under to refuse to reduce public safety pensions or lose law enforcement endorsements to Whitman. Months earlier, Whitman had agreed to exempt public safety officials from key parts of her pension reform plan.

“Do we want to put an ad out? … That I have been warned if I crack down on pensions, I will be – that they’ll go to Whitman, and that’s where they’ll go because they know Whitman will give ‘em, will cut them a deal, but I won’t,” Brown said.

At that point, what appears to be a second voice interjects: “What about saying she’s a whore?”

“Well, I’m going to use that,” Brown responds. “It proves you’ve cut a secret deal to protect the pensions.”

whore noun

1 : a woman who engages in sexual acts for money : prostitute; also : a promiscuous or immoral woman 

2 : a male who engages in sexual acts for money

3 : a venal or unscrupulous person

Conclusions

1. Brown did not call Whitman a whore; his associate did. 
2. It may be plausibly argued that, in at least one sense of "whore," Whitman appears to be (in this case at least) a whore. 
3. How Ziganto can maintain her readership with such sloppy work is a bit of a mystery. 
4. And by the way, Lori: being a feminist does not prohibit one from criticizing other women. You appear to assume that it does. Don't be stupid. 

Update. In her latest Brown-related rant, Ziganto has shown a momentary and uncharacteristic regard for the truth. She writes:

Earlier this month, the National Organization For Women (N.O.W.) endorsed Jerry Brown for Governor of CA a mere 24 hours after an audio tape surfaced wherein Jerry Brown was heard agreeing with an aide that Meg Whitman should be called a “whore“.

Good for you, Lori. I'm proud of you. I hope that wasn't too painful.

Conventional Conservative Wisdom 1, Reality 0

Andrew Sullivan brought my attention to a post by Mark Oppenheimer. In that post, Oppenheimer writes:

[W]hy is there anti-Muslim rage in places with very few Muslims and no history of Muslim terrorism whatsoever? There are good answers to this question, I am sure, but it is late, and for now I will just marvel at how odd it is that somebody thinks it is easy to be a Muslim sympathizer in New York, but out in the rest of the country [it is not]. 

I have an hypothesis. One of the targets on 9/11 was New York City, which many conservatives believe to be a bastion of liberalism. And, as many conservatives believe, liberals support that Muslim socialist President Obama and insist on tolerance for all religions except for the one practiced by conservatives. So, they believe, it is easy for New Yorkers to enthusiastically support Muslims even though they were attacked nine years ago by terrorists who many conservatives also (incorrectly) believe to have been very good Muslims.

In other words: this is a case in which conventional conservative wisdom conflicts with reality. And in battles between conventional conservative wisdom and reality, reality often loses. This how yokels like Sarah Palin can appear to be more invested in American ideals than your average New Yorker, i.e., someone who has actually been on the front line in the so-called War on Terror and sacrificed more for those ideals than most.

By the way, while you're visiting Sullivan's blog, check out "Yglesias Award Nominee II."

The Tax Cut that Fell in the Woods

From The New York Times:

In a troubling sign for Democrats as they head into the midterm elections, their signature tax cut of the past two years, which decreased income taxes by up to $400 a year for individuals and $800 for married couples, has gone largely unnoticed.

In a New York Times/CBS News Poll last month, fewer than one in 10 respondents knew that the Obama administration had lowered taxes for most Americans. Half of those polled said they thought that their taxes had stayed the same, a third thought that their taxes had gone up, and about a tenth said they did not know. As Thom Tillis, a Republican state representative, put it as the dinner wound down here, “This was the tax cut that fell in the woods — nobody heard it.”

Actually, the tax cut was, by design, hard to notice. Faced with evidence that people were more likely to save than spend the tax rebate checks they received during the Bush administration, the Obama administration decided to take a different tack: it arranged for less tax money to be withheld from people’s paychecks.

They reasoned that people would be more likely to spend a small, recurring extra bit of money that they might not even notice, and that the quicker the money was spent, the faster it would cycle through the economy.

Economists are still measuring how stimulative the tax cut was. But the hard-to-notice part has succeeded wildly. In a recent interview, President Obama said that structuring the tax cuts so that a little more money showed up regularly in people’s paychecks “was the right thing to do economically, but politically it meant that nobody knew that they were getting a tax cut.”

“And in fact what ended up happening was six months into it, or nine months into it,” the president said, “people had thought we had raised their taxes instead of cutting their taxes.”

Democrats are in danger of losing the House of Representatives to Republicans, and this is certainly due in part to their failure to advertise their own tax cut and one that many Republicans would agree is stimulative. Oh, the irony.

A Few Bad Arguments against Homosexuality

Perhaps you've heard that Colorado Senate candidate Ken Buck compared homosexuality to alcoholism over the weekend during a debate with his opponent on NBC's Meet the Press.

Buck made the comparison during this brief exchange:

MR. GREGORY: . . . Mr. Buck I want to start with you.  The issue of gays in our country, in a debate last month you expressed your support for "don't ask, don't tell," which we talked about with Mr. Gibbs, and you alluded to lifestyle choices. Do you believe that being gay is a choice?

MR. BUCK:  I do.

MR. GREGORY:  Based on what?

MR. BUCK:  Based on what?

MR. GREGORY:  Yeah.

MR. BUCK:  Well...

MR. GREGORY:  Why do you believe that?

MR. BUCK:  Well, I guess you can, you can choose who your partner is.

MR. GREGORY:  You don't think it's something that's determined at birth?

MR. BUCK:  I, I, I think that birth has an influence over like alcoholism and some other things, but I think that basically you, you have a choice.

MR. GREGORY:  Does that put him outside the mainstream of views on this?

SEN. BENNET:  I absolutely believe he's outside the mainstream of views on this.

Why do I bring this up? I recently wrote that I haven't seen a decent argument that homosexuality is wrong or that we ought to discriminate against homosexuals in the law. I'd like to take this opportunity to explain further.

Buck supports "don't ask, don't tell." This is a form of legal discrimination against homosexuals. Therefore, Buck supports at least some forms of legal discrimination against homosexuals. What are his reasons for doing so? I don't know. Perhaps he has no reasons and he just doesn't like homosexuals or he is afraid of them or he thinks that being hostile to homosexuals will help him get elected. As I will show, the belief that homosexuality is somehow a choice is not a good reason for discriminating against homosexuals. So if that is one of his reasons, he ought to reevaluate his view.

According to NBC News, Buck later refined his position:

After the debate, Buck clarified that he thinks there is "some element of predisposition" in homosexuality. He noted that he mentioned alcoholism as an example of another behavior that can be influenced by genetic factors.

"I wasn't talking about being gay as a disease," Buck said. "I don't think that at all."

I am happy to take him at his word. It seems to me that Buck was drawing an analogy between homosexuality and alcoholism, and in arguments by analogy, the objects being compared needn't be alike in all respects, and the arguer shouldn't be understood as claiming that they are.

Now, does the assumption that homosexuality is a mixture of predisposition and choice justify discrimination against homosexuals?

The argument may be more precisely articulated thus:

1. Homosexuality is a mixture of predisposition and choice. 
2. Discrimination in the law against anything that is a mixture of predisposition and choice is justified. 
3. Therefore, discrimination in the law against homosexuality is justified.

Notice that one can't derive (3) without (2).

In what sense would homosexuality be a mixture of predisposition and choice? Perhaps this: one is born disposed to be a homosexual, and this disposition is activated when one makes certain choices. Indeed, this is what Buck appears to believe, since he says that homosexuality involves a predisposition but that one chooses one's partners. Now, here's the crucial question: is heterosexuality any different? Not that I can tell. Heterosexuality is also a mixture of predisposition and choice. Therefore, if (2) is adequate grounds to discriminate against homosexuals, then (2) is also adequate grounds to discriminate against heterosexuals. But clearly, it is absurd to think that we ought to discriminate against heterosexuals, simply because their heterosexuality is a mixture of predisposition and choice. So the argument in question fails.

Many arguments against homosexuality and for discrimination against homosexuals fail simply because parallel arguments mentioning heterosexuality and heterosexuals are clearly absurd. For example, my mother-in-law argues that homosexuality is wrong because homosexual behavior is medically risky. But it isn't essentially so, and many heterosexual activities are also medically risky and would therefore also be wrong. Even heterosexual intercourse in marriage involving penetration of the vagina by the penis involves some medical risk. If anything, this argument at best proves only that we have a moral obligation to minimize medical risk in our sexual activities (which is, of course, a pretty good idea anyway). 

Another problem with the argument is the assumption that predispositions are somehow morally relevant. From the fact that one is predisposed to do something, nothing follows morally. Those who defend the moral permissibility of homosexuality have claimed that homosexuality is permissible since it is predisposed rather than a mere lifestyle choice. But some of the things we may be predisposed to do are clearly wrong. For example, it may be that we are predisposed toward violence in densely populated areas or when resources are scarce, but that would hardly morally excuse violent behavior in those circumstances. Alternatively, those who hold that homosexuality is wrong sometimes argue that it is wrong because it is merely a lifestyle choice. But plenty of lifestyle choices are perfectly permissible: there is nothing wrong with becoming a monk, or getting married, or living frugally, or devoting one's life to helping others, and so on. The fact that something is a lifestyle choice is not itself a good reason to discriminate against people.

I am a heterosexual. I have no interest in engaging in homosexual behavior, and in fact I find the idea of homosexual behavior disagreeable. But homosexual relationships clearly bring great happiness to many people (as my marriage brings great happiness to me), and there is no good reason to discourage them or discriminate against people in them.

At bottom, I simply don't care what other people are doing in their bedrooms because I have more important things to think about. So does Ken Buck.

A Certain Conservative Delusion

One of my Facebook friends posted a link to this column on RealClearPolitics by Arnold Ahlert entitled "Why Dems are Going Down in November." It's rife with the usual right-wing internet boilerplate. (Did you know that health care reform is the "absolute epitome of ideological, public-be-damned arrogance"? I guess I was supposed to be happy with Republicans doing absolutely nothing to reform our health care system beyond passing Medicare Part D. I just love paying $322 for half an hour in a recovery room!) But there is one point in particular I wish to take issue with here. Ahlert writes:

Progressive contempt for the values and traditions which make this the greatest country on earth can no longer be disguised. An American president who "believe(s) in American exceptionalism, just as I suspect that the Brits believe in British exceptionalism and the Greeks believe in Greek exceptionalism" has made it plain that this is not a great nation which needs tweaking, but a fundamentally flawed one needing a complete progressive make-over. Once one understands this basic premise, everything this administration and Democratically-controlled Congress does makes sense. All of it centers around the ridiculous premise that America owes the world an apology for any number of shortcomings, many of which can only be alleviated by government-mandated "social justice." That would be the same social justice which demanded-and still demands-that Americans manifestly unqualified to own homes be given mortgages, regardless.

What is this shit about progressive contempt for American values? What makes Ahlert think that he speaks for American values? President Obama has lived American exceptionalism; he is a product of it, a manifestation of the American Dream and the belief that any American can reach the limit of her potential, no matter how modest her beginnings. If anyone is invested in American exceptionalism, it is President Obama, not some rube who blogs for the New York Post.

For too long, conservatives have gotten away with claiming that they have some kind of monopoly on American values, when in fact it is conservative ideology that contradicts it.  Rather than insist on rules of fair play that make it possible for everyone to flourish, conservatives insist upon deregulation and its attendant anarchy which preserves the advantage the very wealthy enjoy in the "free" market. Conservatives claim that they represent family values, and yet consistently make it more and more difficult for actual families to tread water in this economy, by resisting health care reform, increases in the minimum wage, extensions of unemployment benefits in a recession, and so on.

Ahlert claims that Democrats feel the need to apologize to the world for American shortcomings. He hopes that you will infer that Democrats feel the need to apologize for America. Ahlert thus implicitly identifies America with the policies of the Republican Party during the reign of Bush II. In fact, we do need to apologize to the world for the actions of the renegade Bush II administration. But those actions were not representative of America, and to apologize for them is not to apologize for America: to apologize for them is to apologize for the actions of those brought under the influence of an insane ideology by radical terrorist Muslims and opportunistic neocon politicians.

You don't represent American ideals, Arnold: you represent a political party that will do virtually anything to regain power and make government work for corporate elites at the expense of ordinary folks like me.

Democrats will go down in November, but Ahlert is out of his mind if he thinks that it's because Republicans have a monopoly on American values.