Ruben Navarrette Jr. is almost as big a tool as Glenn Beck–although it takes a lot to be as big of a tool as Beck.

Ruben posted a commentary on CNN.com: Commentary: Obama’s confusing blend of left-right economics in which he whines about not understanding Obama’s message that just as each of us need to work to help ourselves, we have the responsibility as fellow humans in a society to help each other as well. Ruben can’t seem to wrap his mind around the idea that the idea that “everyone can lift themselves up by the bootstraps” is bullcrap. Oh sure, people can and have risen from nothing to riches on their own–but it’s usually at the expense of and by stepping on the backs of other people. That kind of “bootstrap” selfishness is fine if you live out in the wild west frontier, but doesn’t work in our web of social interaction in which the welfare of my neighbors affect my own and vise versa.

Ruben has the idiotic blindness to throw a token complain at Bush and then later spew this ridiculousness:

I can’t remember the last time I saw government do something right. … Case in point: On this third anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, there are people in New Orleans who are still waiting for the federal government to rebuild that city…

He’s completely fallen for the Republican con job! Break the government and then get people to vote for you by complaining about broken government! That’s chutzpah! The Bush administration and the neo-cons have systematically broken the U.S. government by privatizing everything not nailed down and putting loyalist lackeys completely incompetent for their jobs in charge of the hen houses. Then when things like Katrina happens and the people they put in charge of programs they broke fail to do any good or even make things worse, they turn around and say “See how broken government is?! Vote for us, the small government party!” God! It’s obvious! It astounds me when people can’t see it.

Then Ruben has the bold faced audacity to claim:

The same goes for the Democrats who convened in Denver. This is a party that maintains power by trying to convince people that our country is a dark place, devoid of opportunities, and that the answer is to elect more of them.

Now they’re seeking a change in the White House, a change in policy, and a change in national priorities –even if they aren’t ready to change their tune.

OK, that’s just utter B.S. Period. Anyone who actually listens to Obama, Biden, Wexler, Kennedy, even Clinton, anyone who has been speaking for the last week in favor of Obama has speaking almost entirely of our promise as a nation. Of the fight and vigor of the American people. Of the, get this… CHANGE (sound familiar?) that is needed to get this broken government that is breaking the people back on track to prosperity and hope!

Ruben Navarrette Jr. is an effin’ tool.

The “invisible hand” to which I refer is the famous metaphor for the free market economy. The supposed magic hand that makes everything cheaper and more efficient. Feh! But more on that general topic later. Right now, here is some excellent information on how the free market health care system is f—d up.

Here’s an article by Harvard cell biology post-grad Alex Palazzo in which he uses various sources of information, including the New England Journal of Medicine, to illustrate how in our lovely free market system, health care (and education) costs continue to rise over and beyond most other costs of living:

• Let’s talk about facts this election – Part III – Health Insurance

“Results: In 1999, health administration costs totaled at least $294.3 billion in the United States, or $1,059 per capita, as compared with $307 per capita in Canada. After exclusions, administration accounted for 31.0 percent of health care expenditures in the United States and 16.7 percent of health care expenditures in Canada. Canada’s national health insurance program had overhead of 1.3 percent; the overhead among Canada’s private insurers was higher than that in the United States (13.2 percent vs. 11.7 percent). Providers’ administrative costs were far lower in Canada.”

Meanwhile, John Goodman, close friend to John McCain and a policy advisor, and likely someone who will have influence in a McCain administration, recently stated that no one in America is uninsured because everyone has access to an emergency room. (McCain adviser: Everyone in U.S. has some health coverage)

Yes, of course! Because that’s exactly what parents of infants with a worrying cough do, they go to the emergency room! Need a child wellness visit or a preventative care treatment, that’s what emergency rooms are for! Gynecological and prostate exams? Emergency room! I bet they diagnose and treat cancer and immuno-diseases in emergency rooms! Hey, my wife’s chronic illness doesn’t have to bankrupt us from medical bills–we just have to go to the emergency room!

And the GOP condemns liberals for being “elitists.”

The proof of the GOP’s hatred for the middle class is all around. Having ready access to health care and quality public education are the two things which can make for a strong democracy! If the people of a nation can be healthy and not driven into poverty by health care, and have access to education, the people can be powerful and vital and strong. But that’s not what the GOP wants. They are the party of the capitalists and they want oligarchy. They want the richest 1 to 5% to run the country and everyone else to be subject to their rule as nothing more than mass consumers. What did Bush say after 9/11? Go out and buy stuff. What’s his solution for a recession? Give us money so you can buy stuff. Meanwhile they’re systematically undermining the education system by underfunding it and disincentive-ing (let’s say that’s a word for now) good teachers and promoting private and paid charter schools, and their official health care plan is to encourage insurance companies to raise rates and let the poor see a doctor only when it’s life threatening. For the seventh straight year capital gains is up while the average wage has gone down and the number in poverty is up. (Meaning: corporations are making more profit while the workers are seeing less money.)

Of course I say that’s the GOP plan, and it is, but they’re the biggest villains because they’re unabashedly the party of protecting the rich. The Democrats have a larger number of progressives and people who want to empower the poor and middle class (two classes coming increasingly closer), though they’re not off the hook. For example, Senator Clinton’s grand “universal” health care plan is to force everyone to buy health insurance like we do car insurance. Hey, increase the profits of the private health insurance companies, put a greater strain on the family budget, and make it a mandatory burden on the people… that’s about as evil a plan as any Republican could come up with! While the Dems have more people in political office who have come up from poor and modest families and didn’t inherit money, they’re all products of capitalist ideology and will always be tools of the hegemony regardless of where their hearts lie in helping or hindering the other 95% of the population. The only consolation is that more Dems do have their hearts in the right place and at least that’s something.

A recent interview with author and technology writer Cory Doctorow really exemplifies the necessity for real universal health care in a democracy. (Interview with Free Talk Live) I think Cory Doctorow can be branded as anything but a fascist socialist! He’s on the front lines of fighting for civil liberties and against the encroaching police state in the U.S., U.K., Canada, and…the world if possible. But he made a comment on that libertarian radio show that resonated with me like a puzzle piece falling into place or the last square sticker on a Rubik’s Cube being put on the proper side: he said (and I’m paraphrasing) that socialized health care is as vital a component of society’s infrastructure as roads or the sewer system. It was a reasonable and realistic comment that I, and I think so many other people in the U.S., subliminally understand but have not been able to put into words.

Libertarians and objectivists live in a world 100 years gone–a world where people could live and thrive making minimal contact with other people and where health care was basically eating right and seeing a doctor if you have TB. We don’t live in that world. We live in a society in which people live virtually right on top of each other. We have no choice but to interact with masses of people every day and the people they dealt with on and on. Your ability to have access to good health care and the freedom to use it without fear of bankruptcy affects me directly in many ways beyond just contagious illnesses. My child’s ability to get good, consistent education from her teacher depends on her teacher’s access to health care. My job at work depends on my coworkers being healthy and in good shape. By boss depends on that from his workers. Our daily lives are so intertwined with each other, our productivity, education, entertainment, lifestyle, security, depends on each of us being healthy and not preoccupied with going broke because of ridiculously high medical bills.

Doctorow stated on the radio interview that as a writer he’d never want to live anywhere that didn’t have socialized health care. He told a couple of stories of how he and his infant daughter got wonderful medical and dental care from socialized facilities, completely counter to the horror stories the conservatives and libertarians dredge up. (And I concur. My brother, who moved to Montreal, and his mother-in-law, have experienced fantastic Canadian health care “free” of charge, and their taxes aren’t much higher than ours–negligible difference in fact. Meanwhile, I’m paying ridiculous amounts in insurance deductibles and out of pocket in addition to the taxes I pay to fund an illegal and immoral war, and I still have to wait to see a specialist. For example, I had a repetitive stress injury in a hand that could seriously affect my work performance, and in addition to my insurance I still had to pay nearly a grand for an MRI that I also had to wait three painful and reduced productivity weeks for.)

And his comment that he could be a writer and not worry about his and his family’s health while living in Canada or the U.K. has kind of pissed me off (not at him). We in the U.S. are increasingly working for insurance (and our gas). We’re forced to whither away our pathetically short lives as worker drones unable to follow dreams of life and pursuit of happiness–unless it’s to be a worker drone for literally most of our lives. I can’t be the writer I want to be because I have to work for insurance. Because, unlike a lot of successful writers, I’m not brilliant, writing any kind of quality fiction or non-fiction takes a lot of fresh and wakeful brainpower on my part (blogging doesn’t count–it’s an utterly mindless and quick expulsion of words for me, as anyone reading this can attest to). If I want to be successful, I have to write as a full-time job. As it is, I can’t do that because I have to work 40+ hours a day at a mind and energy sapping job so I can have a chance at keeping us from going bankrupt from medical expenses. Otherwise I could easily have a mindless part-time job for other bills and be able to put all the time and energy I want into writing good stuff. I have no chance of doing that under free market private health care. And it makes me so angry!

Well, enough mindless ranting for now.

(Or at all, really. I had to finally read the Bible myself to learn about these religious atrocities.)

Friendly Atheist features a review and some illustrations from the book Illustrated Stories from the Bible (that they won’t tell you in Sunday School) by Paul Farrell:

• Illustrated Stories from the Bible

It’s one thing to hear about or read about Judeo-Christian god’s psychopathic blood lust and sociopathic amoral personality, but it puts it in a whole new light when you see it illustrated.

Hemant goes easy on Christians by acknowledging there’s a lot of “good stuff” in the Bible as well. And there are. But one has to ask, at what point does one’s belief that a book is holy and the intended Word of God become strained knowing that the divinely ordained horrors within outweigh the good? I can think of a great many more books that have a much higher ratio of “good” to “horrifically disgusting”–why aren’t they revered and worshiped and followed as instruction books to live one’s life by?

At what point is a person forced to reevaluate the book they put on a pedestal (sometimes literally) and realize this is no book worthy of such reverence. When is a book so riddled with cherry-picking that it’s no longer a viable and valid as a tool for worldly or even spiritual guidance?

I’m seriously asking here.

This is too brilliantly funny!

(hat tip to Humanist Mama)

This is a very, very scary time we live in right now. Jack Cafferty has a fantastic although disheartening commentary on CNN.com right now:

• Commentary: Is McCain another George W. Bush?

He talks about how McCain was at the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy (likely got into the Navy through his Admiril dad), has no intellectual curiosity, is only capable of speaking in canned responses, is good with a quip or a jibe but can’t think on his feet…he’s very much a Bush pt. 2:

George Bush’s record as a student, military man, businessman and leader of the free world is one of constant failure. And the part that troubles me most is he seems content with himself.

He will leave office with the country $10 trillion in debt, fighting two wars, our international reputation in shambles, our government cloaked in secrecy and suspicion that his entire presidency has been a litany of broken laws and promises, our citizens’ faith in our own country ripped to shreds. Yet Bush goes bumbling along, grinning and spewing moronic one-liners, as though nobody understands what a colossal failure he has been.

I fear to the depth of my being that John McCain is just like him.

The fact that we may get John McCain as President is scary enough. But what magnifies the fear a hundred-fold is comments from “ordinary people” like this one from a “Jimmy P”:

I certianly hope so! Because whether you liberal pansys like it or not, it’s this administration’s policies that have kept the homeland from being hit again. Don’t think for a minute that these lunatics, that fools like Obama would attempt to negotiate with, wouldn’t hit us here at home if possible. We are not entitled to unlimited civil liberties – check my phone, pc, bank account, who cares! Fascism is the best form of government! The majority of people are unable to run their own lives in a responsible manner. To he** with Democracy, it’s a failed experiment!

Is that an ironic, joke comment? Based on similar sentiments I’ve seen elsewhere, I doubt it. While so far that’s the most fanatic response on the CNN.com post. half the comments are from people who are supporting McCain for his rhetoric against terrorism and bashing Obama for his desire for diplomacy. (Yeah, because Nixon didn’t think to use diplomacy dealing with the Chinese who were fueling the Viet Nam war from that side ot it. He blew them off the face of the Earth, right?)

Many people hate to foster the supposedly illusionary division in this country they think is a manufacturing of the media and their color-coded states; but regardless of “red” or “blue” state coloring, there IS two Americas: one that believes the President should be a smart, educated, versatile, adaptable, statesman; and another that believes the President should be a butt-kickin’ regular joe who takes no guff and will show the rest of the world who’s boss. The former believes there’s a balance between security and civil liberties and cares about how the country is run and how healthy it and its citizens are, the other seems to not care less about other people so long as they can say they’re winning a foreign war.

I see this division every day at work, I read about it all over the blogonets, I hear it all over the radio. It’s a very real and deep division, and I really have no idea how it can possibly be bridged without A. the U.S. collapsing under the watch of neo-cons (which I don’t want to happen!), or B. we once again become a strong, stable country with a powerful middle-class and no bloody foreign entanglements. No, even then, the people on the far right would never admit they might be wrong and will continue to criticize and complain about socialism and we’re not doing enough to kill our enemies.

How will this possibly end?

An interview recently released (but recorded a year ago) with writer and technoculture critic Cory Doctorow, on Reality Break podcast, has what I think is a brilliant observation about the subjectivity of contemporary issues and the concept of “the Singularity” specifically:

Science fiction is about reflecting the present not the future, so, all science fiction writers predect the present and that means they write in the style and the form of the day. And you know I think the “Singularity” right now reflects a sort of social anxiety about technical people who are slipping. You know, it’s kind of like an après moi le déluge. You know, “once Vernor Vinge can’t keep up with technological progress, technical progress will no longer be keep-upable with.” And I think there’s something to that, I think there’s this feeling that when you transition from being a bright young turk to grumpy old fart that what’s changed is the world and not you, and that the world has changed in a way that is truly wrong. My friend Jim Griffon says that “If it’s been invented before you were eighteen then you assume it’s always been there, if it’s invented before you’re thirty you assume it’s the best thing ever made, if it’s invented after you’re thirty you assume that it should be illegal.”

(He also has some great discussion on why social networking software is so addictive and how absurd end user license agreements (EULAs) are by forcing us to assume a contract by our behavior–for example, those rediculous stickers on software CD envelopes (or the notices sometimes inside the envelope) that state “by opening this envelope you agree to….”)

Anyway, I find this comment about the nostalgia for the past and the fear of the future intriguing since I’ve been spending a lot of time the last year researching the “death of science fiction” (or rather, its absorption into all genre) and having spent many brain cycles on this concept of the Singularity. It’s an idea put forward by author and scientist Vinge that posthuman technology is advancing in such a way that when humans today would be incapable to perceiving or understanding the “human” of the future, humanity will have passed through the Singularity and modern human history will be at an end. This event could be when artificial intelligence has overtaken homo-sapien and we have been relegated to a “lesser” species, or when homo-sapiens have fundamentally changed via genetic manipulation and cyber enhancement.

It’s an idea that’s gaining a lot of ground both in sf and in technoculture–but one has to wonder, does putting such a connotatively fatal demarcation seperating the two not imply fear of the advancement?

I really need to keep writing this weekend (OMG! I just touchtyped that last sentence! And most of this sentence! This is a big deal for me. I’ve been using a keyboard, sometimes 10+ hours a day, for 25 years, and I still can’t touchtype. Anywa….) so this should be reasonably brief.

A couple of communities have taken very different approaches to the threat of crime in their community. (Before I get started, I’m comparing apples to crabapples here as the threat of crime are two different types for the communities. Regardless, I think the differences in approaches are far reaching and grander than the specifics of what they’re trying to protect themselves against.)

A town in Arkansas, plagued by a criminal culture of drugs and shootings, has allowed its law enforcement to place the town under martial law:

• Crime-ridden Arkansas town expands 24-hour curfew

“Curfew” is a rather quaint term for what’s going on there. The police, with automatic assault rifles, are stopping anyone from being on the streets after curfew. Their attitude it clear:

“As far as I’m concerned, at 3 o’clock in the morning, nobody has any business being on the street, except the law,” Councilman Eugene “Red” Johnson said. “Anyone out at 3 o’clock shouldn’t be out on the street, unless you’re going to the hospital.”

It seems to be the opinion of the town’s “leaders” that free citizens don’t have the liberty to be out on their own business in their town when they wish. His belief that everyone should be resting snug in their beds at night else you’re a ne’er-do-well is being imposed by force upon free citizens.

Of course, as all things are, the issue is complicated. There’s no doubt that their town is overrun by crime. Randoms shootings, drive-bys, drugs rampant. In a very significant way I feel for this town. There’s a part of me that thinks in order to deal with an out of control crime wave, the fascist fist of martial law is needed to stem the tide so that more democratic means can be allowed to have an effect. Martial law is an addressing of a symptom–crime come from failures in the social structure and no amount of fascist strength will solve the problems of social distress.

I don’t completely disagree with a limited and controled use of strength to get a situation under control, but that’s not what appears to be happening in this town (I’ve never even visited and know nothing about aside from news articles). It would seem the law of the land has an attitude that armed enforcement of curfew is not a limited and should not be a limited solution but rather a norm. When you have community leaders making statements that no one should be out on the streets late at night, you have a truly fascist attitude which seeks to control the populace and not help it to live with liberty and freedom. This town may push the criminal element to other neighboring towns, but they will not solve the underlying issues this way and will in fact end up do more harm to the very concepts of what it means to live in America.

In the curfew area, those inside the homes in the watch area peered out of door cracks Tuesday as police cruisers passed. They closed the doors afterward.

That sounds like an establishing shot from a movie set in East Germany or the Soviet Union, maybe a movie version of 1984.

Meanwhile, to protect their school children from what they see as a rising tide of school shootings, a Texas school district will be allowing its teacher to carry concealed handguns:

• Texas district will let teachers carry guns

“Gun free zones” are basically game preserves for anyone who has enough disdain for law as to want to shoot people and are going to ignore “gun free zone” declarations in order to do it. A look at school shootings the last couple of decades and you see pretty much two scenarios playing out: 1. A shooter enters a school and starts killing and wounding unprotected people until they decide when to stop, and then they kill themselves. Police arrive after it’s all done. 2. Someone (a student and/or teacher) runs to their car, grabs their gun, and comes back to stop the shooter thus ending the spree earlier than the shooter would have decided to. Police arrive after it’s all done. (Same goes with the recent church shootings.)

Unless a school is placed next door to a police station, it can take several minutes for police to respond to a shooting (which even in this age of cell phones, may not even be placed until a couple of minutes into the event), and then it can take longer for the police to make an organized counter “attack” on the shooter. And as we’ve seen, it doesn’t take very long for a shooter to exhaust their ammo and turn a final shot on themselves.

The idea of a “liberal media” is absurd, except when it comes to issues of successful non-police use of guns to protect innocent people, then the media is generally silent on reporting it:

• When killers meet armed resistance
• A quick index to our articles on guns, gun control and gun free zones.

(Although, as you can see, CNN.com appears to be doing a fair piece on this Texas town–kudos to them)

The important thing is that the school district is being smart about it. When rabid liberals hear the idea of letting teachers or students carry firearms on a campus, they immediately commit reductio ad absurdum and imagine a wild west shootout left and right. The district will be requiring very specific and strict guidelines for who can carry:

For employees to carry a pistol, they must have a Texas license to carry a concealed handgun, must be authorized to carry by the district, must receive training in crisis management and hostile situations and must use ammunition designed to minimize the risk of ricocheting bullets.

(OK, so this isn’t brief.) These are indeed two different situations that have received two different solutions, but I would like to point out the mindset and the larger repercussions of both solutions. In the Arkansas town you have a situation where the empowerment of the people has be abdicated in favor of police control. The populace have turned over their ability to take matters in their own hand, to fight to make change in their community, over to an entirely different group of armed thugs. A more organized and better funded group of thugs, perhaps. The free citizens have given up their freedom and have chosen to live under siege. Safe, perhaps, but disempowered and cowering to a different force that’s become even more uncontrollable than the criminal element.

On the other hand, the Texas town is determined to take matters into their own hands and protect their own themselves. They have recognized the absurdity of both fascist control and posting warning signs that have all the effect of “Nuh uh, mister baddie-bad. You can’t bring your guns in here to express your sociopathic suicide rage–this is a ‘gun free zone!’” Instead of relying on the near-impossible protection of the police, they have chosen a course of action that empowers themselves and not only does not eliminate freedom but rather express and celebrates it.

It’s this exact difference in attitudes which can be extrapolated into the bigger context of our reaction to terrahism. Our government has decided to take the attitude of the Arkansas town and enact police state tactics. It has decided the best way to protect the land of the free against those who despise our freedom and liberty, is to remove freedom and liberty. To paraphrase Penn Jillette, the first act our government should have done after 9/11 was to remove laws, not make more restricting our freedoms. The best attack against fundamentalism is to increase freedom and liberty and not do their job for them.

And the tragic thing is that we the people are letting it happen. We’re peeking out the crack of our doors and closing them tight as the law drives by in the middle of the night. We imagine we’re nice and safe, but unlike the “safety” of the Arkansas town, our safety is completely illusionary. Time and time and time again it’s pointed up how worthless the TSA security is in anything except controlling the innocent. How worthless the border controls are at anything except controlling in innocent. How worthless port inspections are, shipping truck control is. We’re living under increasingly fascist state control without the benefit of the safety we’re supposedly being sold in exchange for our civil liberties.

I’m a huge Nine Inch Nails fan. I think Trent Reznor is a brilliant musician and a savvy marketer and electronic music guru. From Nine Inch Nails one can draw lines of influence to bands and performers like Filter and Tweaker and Marilyn Manson (as Reznor had something more than a minor direct influence on each of them). His mixture of sonic dissonance and noise with sublime melody and often poetically emotional lyrics and a powerful and compelling voice… amazing.

Anyway, a couple of years ago he released a concept album (previewed online for free and setting the stage for the appropriately modern and technology aware marketing of the later Ghosts albums) entitled Year Zero which looks at a world several years in the future should the current neo-con trends in politics continue. Politically charged without being so pedestrian as to refer to any actual people or events and thus forever dating itself, the message of the album is clear if subtle, and the music is varied and strong.

But one of the best things about the album was its marketing. Its release was preceded by alternate reality game type elements including Web sites which extend the story of the album, “lost” USB keys with music found in various venues, etc. I love ARGs and what they’re capable of (although fascinating, the Year Zero ARG wasn’t very huge or intricate like Halo 2’s “I Love Bees” and A.I.’s “Beast” games).

Anyway, all that said, a limited length series based on the story of Year Zero may be in the works!

• Trent Reznor Is HBO’s Great Scifi Hope?

Glee!

Joe E. Holman over at Debunking Christianity has a great post today in which he contemplates the purpose of hell and what sense there is in the Christian God torturing his children for eternity if there’s no rehabilitation implied:

• What Would Jesus Do…in Hell???

So, I want to know: what does God want us to do in Hell, amidst those agonizing moments of regret and reflective thought? Amongst those endless feelings of everlasting contempt, what does God have to say to us then? When we can force back the pain of damnation long enough to think coherently, what does Jesus want us to think about? What should we do when there is no redemption, no hope, and not a drop of mercy to be found? What do we do when we’ve blown our last chance? Could a perfectly just God “run out” of mercy and have a “last chance”? If Jesus was in our lost condition, suffering eternal retribution, what would he do?

This news item:

• Man whose US immigration notice was sent to the wrong address is detained with untreated spinal cancer until he dies, denied access to his wife and children

I have no comment of my own that could add to the story itself. I’ll just post what some others have said:

OM:

…You know, one day everyone’s going to finally get tired of hire-a-cops, and it’ll be *them* put up against the wall before the lawyers.

Bastards.

Victor Trac:

The terrorists win again. I bet they didn’t expect to be /this/ successful when planning 9/11.

FLUP:

Yet another reason never to go to the US: after they copy the contents of my laptop and phone, they post a letter to the wrong address, lock me up and watch me die.

K2R:

> he no longer received painkillers,
> because he could not stand in line to collect them.

This sounds like one of the pervert things my Grandparent’s generation did in Germany.

“Of course you can have painkillers, just line up there! You can’t walk anymore? Well, I’m afraid, you will have to pick up you medication yourself, it’s the law.”

This is exactly the inhumanity small people in Germany showed while hiding behind buerocracy.

I cannot imagine how desperate he was, being stuck in the bad dream of Kafka the US has become, always hoping to wake up.

“Oceana” is a reference to the setting of George Orwell’s 1984, which is what the U.S./British empire has become. Where Big Brother monitors and watches and tracks everyone.

“London” is a reference to…modern day London, which has careened full throttle toward Orwell’s hellscape of 1984 by, as Cory Doctorow puts it, installing a “CCTV camera for every three blood cells.” Ironically, the late Orwell’s old neighborhood is covered with CCTV cameras.

The latest relevant news? It seems New York is going to turn New York City into a mirror of London, taking the first step of tracking all license plates that enter and leave Manhattan:

• NYPD’s ‘Operation Sentinel’ To Track EVERYTHING

Security expert “sherri” posted to her blog her adventures of flying home without identification:

• Flying Without a Wallet

See, the official policy of the TSA and DHS, is if a person refuses to show ID, they will be refused admittance to the gates, no matter whether they have a boarding pass or not. But, if a person forgets or loses their ID, oh well then after a few questions and a phone call, off you go! Sherri describes how amazingly easy it is to get through security without ID and how it can be even easier to circumvent security altogether–proving security and cryptography expert Bruce Schneier’s point: “I don’t think any further proof is needed that the ID requirement has nothing to do with security, and everything to do with control.”

Sherri makes a comment that is accurate and pertinent to both the TSA “security” as well as NYC’s Operation Sentinel and any other program which strives to track, monitor, and watch people:

It’s important for private citizens to be able to travel without being tracked if they wish. I am not a criminal. I just don’t believe it’s anybody’s business where I go. I understand the need for ensuring the safety of our transportation infrastructure, and as such, searching passengers before boarding makes sense.
.
The freedom to travel anonymously also underlies our right to peacefully assemble. When a government tracks its citizens and can arbitrarily decide to limit or cut off travel, that threatens our democracy. This is especially true in our global society, where many people rely on air travel, trains and the highway just to see their families.
.
TSA’s new policy, which is to focus on finding “dangerous people” rather than objects, poses enormous challenges. It requires that the agency make sweeping judgments about travelers with very little information, and in a very short amount of time. It is simply not feasible to accomplish this accurately.
.
We need to make sure our airports are safe, but at the same time, we have to be very careful not to destroy the very thing we are trying to protect: our free country.

(Emphasis mine.)

Yesterday I posted a super-bloated overlong post: The failure of conservatism. (That’s what happens when I allow myself to write unedited in stream-of-consciousness–which is every time, really.) I railed against the ideas of free market capitalism and libertarian, objectivist anarchy in the modern world. I briefly mentioned public education as part of “the commons,” a service that everyone in a society benefits from either directly or indirectly, and it gets privatized at the risk of harming society.

Well, today, “carr2d2″ on the SkepChick blog posted an article that addresses that very topic:

• Whose freedom?

She reasonably questions the libertarian belief that parents should totally determine the way, why, how, and when a child is educated. carr2d2 asks:

We were looking at the children’s education as a function of the parents’ freedom.  At what point does a parent’s right to raise their child as they see fit (or, as some argue, their freedom to not pay taxes) infringe upon that child’s right to live a healthy life, relatively untainted by abuse?  Don’t we owe it to all our kids to give them as equal a shot as is possible at success?

This topic spawned a great comment thread with wonderful observation like this snippet from AgnosticOracle:

If we look at periods and places where there was no public education the vast majority of working class people didn’t get educated. It isn’t merely a question of fairness to the child. There are externalities of education that benefit society as a whole. Carl Sagan’s father was a garment worker. Without public education there is a good chance the world would have lost out on his genius.
.
It is a benefit not only to the child but to society at large to educate children well. This is especially true if you want a functioning democracy. While we may wish to give the parents the right to teach the child what they want, we shouldn’t give them the right to deny them education. For instance, a parent shouldn’t be able to choose not to teach their daughters math and science.

He, and most commentors, have it exactly right. A parent isn’t imbued with special wisdom simply because they can procreate. They certainly have a wide range of rights along with their responsibilities, but the minimal education of the people who are going to be participating in society is everyone’s concern–not just the parents. The libertarian mindset, like I implied in yesterday’s post, was perfectly reasonable when people can and did live in a such a way as to not have to interact or participate in society at large. but we, as Americans and a human race, have developed far beyond any reasonable concept of isolationism and selfish individualism.

The education of my children directly affects your and your childrens’ lives–you want to be assured that my kids have a certain basic level of education, no? In a libertarian paradise, there’s no guarantee that anyone you interact with doesn’t have a skewed and flawed education, if any. Would you want to live in that kind of wild west in an age in which our health and lives and lifestyle is so delicately balanced on a web of dynamic social interactivity?