Month: January 2019

Abortion: Who Speaks for You?

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Most Americans, and by a wide margin, are in favor of legal abortion, though both opinions and laws vary as to where and when the lines should be drawn. A small percentage of Americans are opposed to the legality of abortion in all circumstances. A small percentage of Americans are in favor of the legality of abortion in all circumstances. Most Americans, perhaps unsurprisingly, would limit abortion to either the first or second trimester, with consideration given for the health of the mother and unborn child.

Those in favor of a complete prohibition of abortion from the moment of conception are in a small minority, and have no prospect of getting their beliefs implemented in law — with or without Roe v. Wade. They are simply too marginal a group: essentially every significant demographic, male and female, religious and non-religious, old and young, black and white, educated and uneducated, disagrees with them.

Similarly, those who believe that abortion should be legal up to the moment of birth are in a small minority. However, unlike the strict anti-abortion prohibitionists, this group does have significant influence. Prominent Democratic politicians are promoting and enacting legislation that effectively allows elective abortion until the moment of birth, despite the fact that very few people actually support such a practice except in the most dire circumstances of medical emergency.

Proponents of legal-until-birth legislation understand that their position is unpopular, so they use legislative legerdemain to hide the reality of their bills. The recently passed New York Reproductive Health Act is an example of this practice. The Act changes the limitations on late-term abortion, stating that an abortion may be performed

“at any time when necessary to protect a patient’s life or health.”

What exactly constitutes the “patient’s health” is not defined in the statute. However, the Supreme Court gave us some idea what the term means in 1973, in the less well-known landmark abortion case, Doe v. Bolton, when it concluded that “health” was whatever a physician deemed it to be after taking into account such factors as “physical, emotional, psychological, familial, and the woman’s age.” (emphasis mine)

If that isn’t broad enough and vague enough — emotional, psychological, familial health? — the New York statute both remove violations of abortion restrictions from the criminal code, and states that abortions can be provided by health care workers who are not actual physicians.

This is now the law in New York state. The state of Virginia is considering similar legislation, with the enthusiastic support of its Governor. Proponents acknowledge that the proposed legislation would allow the elective termination of a healthy, viable child right up to the day of birth.

I understand that some people are fearful that abortion might be made illegal, or so difficult to acquire that it is effectively out of the reach of many or most women. I don’t think that’s a realistic concern, given the broad public support for legal abortion, but I understand how some might think it is.

I confess that I find it harder to understand the enthusiastic defense of abortion up to the moment of a child’s birth. I don’t understand why a woman would not choose to deliver the child, say by Cesarean section, and give it up for adoption, thus undergoing a procedure comparable to a late-term abortion but less likely to leave her emotionally scarred. I don’t understand why anyone thinks it’s a good, necessary, or appropriate thing to make the elective termination of a child at full gestation easier.

Safe, legal, and rare. That was what many who supported abortion rights wanted. Today we’re told that late-term abortions make up one to one-and-a-half percent of the abortions performed every year in America. That’s one per hour, every hour of every day.

Finally, I wonder how many people who, like me, are in favor of abortion being legal but not unbounded, are aware that the pro-choice movement is moving so far to the extreme, and doing so enthusiastically, and with the support of high-profile and influential Democratic politicians.

This seems like a mistake — both political and moral.

Learn To Code?

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“Learn to code.”

Familiar with the phrase? It’s a rather insensitive shorthand way of suggesting that someone enhance his commercial opportunities by acquiring new skills. That can be sincere advice — Walter Brooke encouraging a young Dustin Hoffman to pursue a future in “plastics.” It can be a practical career choice, as demonstrated by a handful of out-of-work Kentucky coal miners who successfully made the transition from working bituminous mines to agile coding techniques.

Most recently — as in last week — “learn to code” is a snarky rebuke to displaced print and internet journalists, and in particular to people recently let go by Buzzfeed, the Huffington Post, and the Gannett media giant. In part, the comment is intended to be karmic, alluding to an attitude that prevailed during President Obama’s tenure when his administration bragged of shutting down entire industries (coal mining, for example) and some in the media glibly suggested the displaced workers upgrade their skills and go get good jobs — in short, “learn to code.”

I code. I’m good at it. I’ve been doing it for a long time, far longer than the average Buzzfeed journalist has been alive, I suspect. I know a thing or two about writing software, and so I want to offer some advice to the young journalists recently of Buzzfeed and the Huffington Post who might be considering a foray into the verdant pastures of my industry.

Software isn’t what you’re used to. Software is the real world.

We all have a pretty good idea — or, at least, a strong suspicion — about what goes on in the modern newsroom. We understand that most everyone thinks pretty much the same way, supports pretty much the same causes, tilts the news in pretty much the same direction. (That’s to the left, in case anyone isn’t clear on that.)

We know that standards are pretty low, particularly at Buzzfeed but pretty much everywhere else as well. (See Convington for a glaring recent instance, but examples abound.) We know that there’s a tendency to pick the news that fits the preferred narrative, and to studiously ignore inconvenient truths. Some of it — most of it, probably — is innocent, the simple consequence of living inside a bubble and breathing the same righteous atmosphere as everyone around you. It’s understandable, and even forgivable. But it isn’t real.

Software is real. Computers are remarkably unforgiving things, completely disinterested in your view of the world, your sense of what should be. Computers don’t care about your groupthink, your consensus, your so-called settled science. They simply do as they’re told — exactly as they’re told. They do it quickly, reliably, relentlessly, inflexibly, and mercilessly.

You can’t sweep software details under the carpet. You can’t ignore exceptions that don’t conform to your hopes and beliefs. You can’t make computational reality real by wishing it so, by telling others it’s so, and by agreeing with all of your peers that it’s so.

By all means, learn to code. It’s a wonderful business, a rewarding and often lucrative activity, and a lot of fun. But it’s going to require something new from you: a commitment to reality, to comprehensive analysis, to an open-minded consideration of the various sides and aspects of a problem. Approach it that way and you may be successful.

But business as usual? No, you’re going to have to up your game if you want to succeed in the real world.

Party of the Falling Sky

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A crisis may be a terrible thing to waste, but the unfortunate truth — unfortunate, that is, for those in need of a crisis — is that crises aren’t all that common. Sure, each individual life has its complexity and challenges, its microcosmic crises. But the nation as a whole chugs along pretty well, with people and businesses managing to adapt to changing circumstances, and most of us getting along without major conflict.

That’s not a convenient truth if you want to galvanize the masses, to drag them out into the street and into the polling places, where they can vent their righteous fury by electing your candidate. For that, you really do need a crisis, something that will make their blood boil.

The law no longer distinguishes between black and white. A few institutions, notably our universities, give special preferences to non-white non-Asian people, but those are the exceptions: in America, skin color does not matter, as a matter of law. We’ve had a black President, any number of high-ranking black officials, black Senators and Congressmen, and a plethora of black stars, sports figures, entrepreneurs, writers, journalists, etc., etc. Non-white people are everywhere in our society and our government: by any reasonable measure, ours is a color-blind nation.

That’s good, and as it should be — unless, that is, the goal is to harness the outrage of offended minorities to achieve electoral success. If that is the goal, reality isn’t your friend: best to gin up some racial animosity, and try to paint a plausible picture of widespread oppression. It turns out that isn’t as hard as one might think, if a lazy and compliant press, and a lazy and unaccountable academia, give their full support to the effort. With their help, a demonstrably inclusive and tolerant country, a nation that self-consciously avoids even the appearance of discrimination, will embrace the fiction that racism remains a daily scourge. And that is all it takes to guarantee the turnout on election day.

Or consider the matter of what is euphemistically referred to as “women’s reproductive health,” because no one really likes the word “abortion.” In America, abortion is legal everywhere thanks to a Supreme Court ruling. Absent that ruling, it would still be legal almost everywhere: few states would ban it outright, and some would — as New York recently demonstrated — go out of their way to embrace its legality. Where you think America stands on the issue depends almost entirely on which questions you ask and how you phrase them. Most Americans, I think, are in favor of some degree of legal abortion; most Americans are opposed to unchecked abortion into the third trimester.

But you wouldn’t know that from the way the issue is talked about in the mainstream press and late night television. From that, you’d think that there was a crisis looming, that women were about to be returned to the dark ages when abortion was illegal and women were property. Even absent Roe v. Wade, there is no reason to believe that a woman could not legally terminate a pregnancy if she wished. But in lieu of a thoughtful discussion of the pros and cons of terminating pregnancies at various stages of gestation, we get the spectacle of women in “handmaid” outfits warning us that a crushing theocracy is right around the corner. Selling that fiction, and the resentment and panic it inspires, is good for business — if your business is getting people to vote for your party.

And then there’s the matter of freedom of speech. Our Constitution guarantees everyone the right to speak and write freely, and it’s a right we should guard jealously. One would think, if one listened only to the preening, grandstanding pomposities of the mainstream media, that this freedom was created specifically for those in the journalistic field, and that it was in dire threat of being extinguished by those in power. Neither is true: the freedom to express oneself is everyone’s right, no more guaranteed to journalists than to you and me; and Americans have never been more free to express themselves, nor more capable of doing so, than we are right now.

Freedom of expression is not under assault, even if our mainstream media demonstrates on a daily basis how incompetent, dishonest, and biased it is. Even awful press is protected, and so they have nothing to fear. Criticism, legitimate and otherwise, is not restriction; no one has reduced the freedom of our news agencies to misreport and distort the news. (We haven’t even restricted the freedom of our major social media and search platforms to filter and suppress content that doesn’t agree with their own biases.)

But a non-crisis doesn’t rouse the mob, so let’s pretend that the First Amendment is as much under assault as, say, the Second. Let’s pretend that the endless stream of late night comedy routines that dutifully mock the administration are an exhibition of bravery in the face of near-certain censure — rather than lazy and unimaginative exercises in preaching to the choir. Let’s pretend that, absent any evidence and despite considerable evidence to the contrary, our most precious freedom is precariously balanced on the edge of an electoral knife, and only a vote for the right party can save it. And let’s see if voters are dumb thoughtless enough to ignore the fact that every single comic they hear is telling them the same things — and none of them have been silenced by the powers that be.

Race, abortion, free speech. There are no crises. But convincing people that these things are in danger is necessary to a party that uses fear and grievance to maintain its hold on a gullible electorate.

The sky isn’t falling. I would think it’s a sad, desperate way to live, believing that it is.

[At Least] Two Americas

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In one America, people are online and informed. Whether they’re well and accurately informed is another matter entirely: journalistic standards appear to be all but nonexistent, and social media and the internet in general are a swirling maelstrom of confirmation bias and venomous hostility. Left-wing opinion writers masquerade as dispassionate reporters; radicals dominate our universities; and activists of every stripe parade across the country’s stage with their claims of increasingly implausible grievances.

In this America, the anger and the outrage and the offense are ubiquitous, inescapable: no claim is too outlandish, no evidence too inadequate, to render it unworthy of reporting — if the right (i.e., right) ox is gored. This is an angry, divided America.

The other America is substantially larger, and substantially less informed about the offense du jour. Sure, that America knows the President is a monster: that truth is in the air and water by now, along with the certain knowledge that he is a Russian… something… bent on repealing the First Amendment. Everyone knows, thanks to media saturation and pop-cultural osmosis, that these things must be true. But, honestly, it’s such a bore, the way some people go on endlessly about it, the way it creeps into their Facebook feeds and dominates late-night television.

This America knows it’s divided. How can it not — it hears it every day. People in this America figure, sensibly enough, that somewhere out there a civil war must be raging. It isn’t here, not where they live. Where they live, everyone seems to get along pretty well: there are no masked antifa freedom-fighters breaking shop windows, no loudmouth activists shouting down dangerously conservative speakers, no riots of any sort. People just go on living, earning and spending money, changing jobs (which is a lot easier than it used to be, by the way), raising their kids, and watching blockbuster super-hero movies.

The country is in a civil war, this America is told. Hard to believe, its people think — but they made the mistake of popping onto Twitter once, so they know the mayhem and bloodshed is real.

On the other hand, they think, Friends is on Netflix, and — peaking out the front window into the empty streets — things seem peaceful enough. And the kids are upstairs sleeping…. Maybe, it sometimes occurs to people in this America, they aren’t the crazy ones.

In Praise of a Border Barrier

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If you believe that America should not secure her borders, and that people should be free to cross them essentially unchecked and with impunity, then we disagree — and I’d be delighted to discuss the matter with you sometime.

But if you believe that America should secure her borders, then I want to suggest three ways in which a physical border barrier is superior to the alternatives.

There are alternative forms of border security available, none of which, incidentally, are incompatible with a physical barrier. We can create a virtual barrier using modern technology, with drones and sensors and cameras and things like that, and we can increase staffing to have a greater police presence on the border. But a physical border barrier has symbolic, political, and functional advantages that those choices lack.

Symbolic

There is a loud minority voice in America calling for open borders, and offering so-called sanctuaries to people here illegally. At their most extreme, these voices are, essentially, calling for an end to the idea of citizenship; certainly they dismiss a unique American culture as either a fiction or a plague, and don’t consider unchecked immigration a threat. To put it mildly, America sends a mixed message to would-be illegal immigrants about how we view illegal entry.

A physical border barrier sends a clearer, less mixed message: it’s hard to mistake a fence or a wall for a welcome mat.

Political

A conspicuous feature of a physical barrier is that it’s static: it sits there and it functions. Yes, it has to be maintained, but a failure to maintain a physical barrier becomes evident fairly quickly. In contrast, drones not flying, cameras not being monitored, sensors not working or being ignored, all of these are inconspicuous failures of border security, none as visible and self-evident as a downed fence or a breached wall.

In a political climate where non-enforcement is the preferred strategy of one side, making that non-enforcement conspicuous helps keep everyone honest.

Functional

There is a very real practical advantage to a physical barrier, one that no other border security mechanism can match. Physical barriers are the only humane way of preventing illegal immigrants from actually setting foot on American soil. (There are inhumane ways of doing that, but they involve large scale and lethal armed confrontation at the border. No decent person should want that.)

Why is it important that illegal immigrants not set foot on American soil? Because our legal system, with its generous and somewhat dysfunctional asylum laws and with a court system seemingly eager to hamstring border enforcement, makes it very difficult to deal effectively with illegal immigrants once they are actually in the country. In particular, the new phenomenon of caravans of would-be illegal immigrants seeking to enter the country en masse, thereby overwhelming our immigration process, can be effectively and humanely dealt with by a physical barrier; it is hard to see what other mechanism might work to deter these organized assaults on our border.

Only a physical barrier humanely prevents the mass influx of illegal immigrants bent on exploiting our own legal system to secure entry.

A Note to Young Men

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There’s a lot of talk these days about toxic masculinity and the problems men cause, both to themselves and to others, when they behave in classically manly ways.

Well, everyone has an opinion, and people are going to talk. But I’m going to share some things with you, man to man, and I hope you’ll remember them the next time a professor or a late night comic or a shaving company tries to tell you how you can “be better” than the sorry creature they apparently think you are.

First, women like manly men. They always have, and they always will. It’s the way we’re wired, no matter what the geniuses in the Gender Studies department try to tell you.

People like to pretend that women want sensitive guys who are in touch with their feelings, but the truth is that they like guys who are guys, guys who don’t whine, guys who spend more time working out or fixing something than they do getting in touch with their emotions. It isn’t just conservative, old-fashioned girls who think this way: most women, whether conservative or liberal, young or old, rich or poor, like a man who is in touch with his masculine side, not his feminine side.

Think about it. Think of the heroes of our popular culture, the movie stars past and present. Are they wimps? Do they fuss? Are they tentative and cautious, concerned about whose feelings they’re going to hurt when they save the girl (or the world)?

Nah, they’re guys. They do the heavy lifting, they take a beating without crying about it, and they don’t worry that people are going to think them insufficiently sensitive or empathic. They’ve been that way forever, back to the earliest recorded accounts. We all know what manliness is.

Secondly, men like manly men.

Men are willing to put up with quite a bit of … expressed concern … from women, because that’s part of the cost of enjoying the company of women. Women care — and care deeply — about things men barely notice, and women are likely to talk about it. Sometimes they’ll talk quite a lot about it.

That’s okay: women are the way they are, and we love them for it. Just shut up and let them talk; that’s often all they want.

But that kind of thing doesn’t look good on a guy. Women don’t think so, and neither do other men. If you want to be respected by other men, you should keep some stuff — a lot of stuff — to yourself. Men don’t need to spend a lot of time “unburdening” themselves, talking just to share their emotions and concerns. Guys will put up with that from women for obvious reasons, but there isn’t much benefit to hearing it from another guy. And, frankly, it’s embarrassing. So, if you really have to talk about it, cut to the chase: keep it short and to the point, and don’t whine.

Real man means something, and it doesn’t mean like a woman, or feminized, or vulnerable. It means what it’s always meant, and what it still means, even if a bunch of unmanly people want to reinvent it — reinvent you — as something weak and soft and compliant.

There’s nothing wrong with being a man.

How to Handle the State of the Union, 2019

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Dear Mr. President,

You recently informed Speaker Pelosi that you would accept her gracious invitation of January 3rd to deliver your State of the Union address to Congress next Tuesday. You justified this by explaining that, contrary to her expressed concerns about security, the Dept. of Homeland Security and the Secret Service have both informed you that security will not be an issue.

Despite this, Speaker Pelosi has once again informed you that the invitation will not be honored, and that you will not be allowed to address Congress.

It seems clear that the Congress has a right to rescind its invitation, and that attempting to force the matter would create a Constitutionally problematic situation. Fortunately, there is a simple, even elegant solution to this potentially embarrassing impasse.

While the Constitution does require that you provide it a report of the state of the union, it does not require that you do so in person. The obvious solution, therefore, is for you to provide a written report to the Congress — and then to deliver that same report, as a speech, to the largest, most adoring crowd of supporters you can assemble for such an historic event.

One very desirable consequence of this will be that the Democrats will be hard-pressed to deliver a televised “response” to your speech without inviting substantial ridicule, given that you addressed the Congress in writing, and that they denied you the opportunity to give a formal address.

Win, win.

Change (Probably) Isn’t Good

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I think a lot about the nature of conservatism and what is variously called leftism, progressivism, or liberalism, but which I like to call radicalism. I think of the political spectrum as having, as its most important axis, a continuum that runs from conservatism to radicalism — from, on the conservative side, an affinity for tradition and reluctance to accept change, to, on the radical side, a casual disregard for tradition and a comfort with change.

I don’t believe that either side has a lock on intelligence, morality, or virtue. I think people of both conservative and radical dispositions are necessary. I think most of us lean one way or the other innately, rather than as a result of education or circumstance — and that most of us lean toward the conservative side, for fairly obvious reasons of evolutionary selection and survival.

While I don’t think either side is necessarily more intelligent or thoughtful than the other, I do think that conservatives tend to be correct more often than radicals. This isn’t an indictment of radicals, but merely an observation that it is easier to preserve what exists than to create something new that is as good as what already exists. And what exists, whatever its faults, has withstood the test of time and demonstrated itself to be, in a cultural sense, fit: like a species that has adapted to its environment, a culture is an evolved thing that has proven itself functional and durable.

Just as it’s easier to successfully prepare an elaborate meal from existing, tested recipes than from inspiration and imagination, so too is it easier for a population to live comfortably by its tested rules and customs than by making radical and experimental departures from them.

This is true to the extent that the culture is a good one — that is, that it provides a decent and rewarding life for its members. Cultures that are grossly dysfunctional, that are cruel and barbaric, that fail to serve most of the population reasonably well, may be functional and durable, but it’s easier to imagine that radical departures will tend to be for the good, given that so much of the culture is already bad.

In other words, the better the culture, the more likely it is that the conservative perspective will be the one more conducive to a general prospering, and the worse the culture, the less worthy of preservation its principles, and the more welcome the risk of radical transformation.

Ours is a good culture. This is an objective statement: by any historical comparison, and by any even remotely fair and reasonable analysis, our culture has promoted the security, comfort, and prosperity of the vast majority of the people who live within it, and done so to a degree never before and nowhere experienced.

Good isn’t perfect. There are aspects of our culture that could undoubtedly be improved. But the burden of proof should be on those who propose radical change, because the status quo is good. What is, is good. Those who propose to change it should make their case, and make it plainly, and openly, in detail, and with some humility. It isn’t enough to have a catchy phrase, or to be swept up in hope and enthusiasm. It isn’t enough to have a winsome or charismatic champion. Radical ideas need strong arguments and robust debate.

We should insist on the open and healthy discussion, debate, and criticism of radical ideas, and oppose efforts to suppress such discussion under the guise of political correctness, tolerance, or sensitivity.

Toward a Deeper Civility

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From a President who often seems mean-spirited and petty, to angry mobs threatening their opponents with bodily harm, to smugly superior journalists and entertainers preaching their bottomless contempt to a Pavlovian audience of unthinking conformists, the observation that much of our national conversation is mired in incivility and vulgarity seems undeniable.

Whether or not this is new is debatable. Heated political exchanges are nothing new; yellow journalism and intemperate pundits are not a 21st century phenomenon, nor even a 20th. What seems likely is that the scope of incivility has increased, upward to the President and Congress, downward to every citizen with a microphone or Twitter account. Partly this is the product of greater participation: when everyone has a voice, a lot of people with nothing useful to say will nonetheless say it loudly.

In such a heated atmosphere, it’s difficult to resist joining in, piling on. I’ve certainly fallen prey to the temptation, as much as I try to resist it. We should all make a greater effort to slow down and dial back the outrage, focus more on ideas than on individuals, spend more time trying to understand each other than scoring points with barbed comments and cheap wit. If civil society is what we want, we should try to be more broadly civil.

But there’s another aspect to civility, one less obvious than a rude tweet or a vulgar stand-up journalist comic. This is respect for alternative viewpoints — at least, for those that are not obviously far outside the bounds of humanity and decency, or wildly irrational. This is deep civility, the willingness not only to be reasonably gracious in one’s discourse, but also sincerely thoughtful in one’s engagement with ideas.

This kind of deep civility is difficult for both conservatives and radicals, for those wary of change and for those enthusiastic for it. But it’s the kind of civility that will be required if we hope to become more broadly decent, because the casual disrespect for ideas and beliefs is the engine that drives the rage we see.

Those on the right, who value tradition and are skeptical, wary, fearful, or otherwise resistant to change should keep in mind what they know to be true: that the old ways aren’t always the best ways. More importantly, they must not assume that those with radical ideas are bent on destruction, or that their desire to effect change is evidence of a wish to tear down the civilized world and introduce barbarism. Whatever one thinks of the virtue of the ideas they espouse, one should try to credit them with decent motives and engage them accordingly.

Those on the left, who are eager for change and confident that the change will be good, should honestly face the reality that change brings inherent risk, that unintended consequences often lead to unexpected and undesirable — and sometimes catastrophic — outcomes. More importantly, they should keep in mind that those who oppose them are not consumed by hatred and a desire to return to an ignoble past, but rather by a wish to preserve and defend what they sincerely believe is good.

I am a man of the right. As long as hatred, bigotry, and small-mindedness are the motives imputed to me because of the views I hold, I must struggle to assume the decency of those with whom I disagree. But I do believe that most people — left and right — are decent; that everyone I know personally is a decent person who wants to make the world better, and that that’s true of most people; and that the ugliness we see springs more from human frailty and imperfection than from malice.

Perhaps the most destructive word introduced into our popular lexicon is hate. It’s time to be a little more charitable in our assessment of motives, so that we can discuss the worthiness of ideas rather than attacking the people who hold them.