Schilling Owes No Apology

ESPN baseball commentator Curt Schilling was suspended yesterday for a tweet in which he compared ISIS to Adolf Hitler. That's a silly, oversensitive thing to do.

ESPN's publicity antennae went off because Muslim and Jewish groups found the tweet objectionable, and ESPN wants nothing to do with anything that might alienate two large, advertising-consuming groups like those. But what can it mean that the tweet was "completely unacceptable"?

ISIS has developed an officially sponsored, systematic approach to raping little girls. It has attempted to wipe from the face of the earth all evidence of life before its brand of cruel, ignorant, nasty Islam. It is led by psychopath.

Comparisons across time and culture are always fraught, and it serves no purpose to engage in talk about "who is the biggest victim." Schilling's tweet therefore did no serious good. Then again, it was a tweet, for goodness sake.

People who cannot handle the comparison need to get over themselves. Jews do not have a monopoly on suffering, and not every remark about the Holocaust needs to be clearer through B'nai Brith. Schilling did not condemn Islam, he condemned a bunch of murderous thugs who claim Islam as justification. Those who do not like it can say so, but ESPN once again took the path of craven sycophancy.

Shame

Scalia (Once Again) Undermines His Own Institution

Antonin Scalia would like to think that he is the lone defender of the United States Constitution, and the stalwart member of the Supreme Court. He talks (and talks) about how the "liberal" members of the Court and the promoters of a "homosexual agenda" (a phrase he actually used in an earlier dissent) are usurping the rights of the majority to pronounce homosexuality immoral.

Antonin Scalia is wrong. No one is more responsible for the disintegration of political discourse in this country than he is. His repeated ad hominem attacks on his colleagues, his insistence on emotional, irrational and irresponsible statements in dissenting opinions, he refusal to accept the necessity of stepping out of the limelight in order to maintain at least an appearance of impartiality, help undercut the very rule of law hos purports to defend.

His latest rant, after the Court struck laws that did not accept gay marriages from other states, makes hi look like a fool, and the Supreme Court like a dysfunctional group of political hacks. If he opposes gay marriage on personal religious grounds, that's his right. I think such beliefs are selfish, myopic and out of touch, but OK. If he believes that the Court reached incorrect conclusions, it's his job to dissent. But to ignore the dignity of the Court and launch a campaign against it is unprofessional and harmful.

In my opinion, he is coming quite close to impeachable offenses.

"You Must Be This Young To Die," by Catherine Luchars

This essay was submitted by Catherine Luchars, just graduated from Millbrook School and headed for Colorado College in the fall.

With the development of medicinal care in the past century, the balance between prolonging life and relieving suffering has become increasingly more controversial for doctors. Instead of death happening naturally or accidently on people’s own terms, it has moved to public hospitals. Physicians now control the outcomes of people’s lives, raising the question of whether the doctor’s authority serves a patient’s best interest. The responsibility of making decisions on how to treat a patient must naturally shift from doctors and governmental authorities to patients and family members. Assuming an individual is competent and of a rational mind, being free from unwanted interference in order to uphold bodily integrity is a fundamental principle engrained into our democratic society. The right of individuals to choose their own medical care and the time, place, and manner of their death is implicit in the basic notion of personal autonomy and self-determination, and ultimately must take precedent over the governmental interest of protecting citizens by safeguarding their health.

This contemporary issue over who should be making medical decisions is being disputed in a current court case in Connecticut. It involves Cassandra C., a 17-year-old girl, who was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in September. In the face of grueling future medical treatments to combat this disease, Cassandra made the personal decision to forego chemotherapy altogether, despite its 80% chance survival rate, and cope with the fact that without treatment her chance of death is almost certain. This decision, supported by her mother, has entangled the two in a legal battle against the Connecticut State courts. It began after the surgical removal of Cassandra’s lymph node performed by local doctors. Following this, Cassandra and her mother planned on consulting with doctors in another state to seek another opinion, but the local doctors called Department of Children and Families, raising the issue of parental medical neglect. As a result, the Court ordered the removal of Cassandra from her mother’s custody until her mother “provided and cooperated with the medical care under DCF supervision and as recommended by her doctors”.[i] Cassandra and her mother subsequently complied with the court’s orders, but after Cassandra received her first two chemotherapy treatments, she ran away from home to avoid further treatment. When she returned, the court “ordered that she be immediately removed from her home and that she remain in DCF’s care and custody”.[ii] They also authorized the DCF to “make all necessary medical decisions on Cassandra’s behalf.”[iii] She is now in a hospital receiving treatment under this court order.

The court declared that not only Cassandra, a 17-year-old girl, is incompetent to make her own medical decisions, but her mother lacks the responsibility as well, bringing up issues regarding personal and family integrity. Cassandra’s mother has acknowledged the fact that her daughter will die without treatment. Her mother declared that regardless of this outcome, “it’s her constitutional right—she doesn’t want poison and toxins in her body. It’s her choice, and I support her decision.”[iv] Cassandra “put up a fight”[v] against the Connecticut state doctors to avoid chemotherapy, and ultimately had to be strapped down to the hospital bed. She reflects on her experience in a personal essay after being hospitalized in December, “ I was strapped to a bed by my wrists and ankles and sedated. I woke up in the recovery room with a port surgically placed in my chest. I was outraged and felt completely violated.”[vi] Cassandra, currently confined to the hospital with limited communications and visits, specifically by her mother, writes that she feels suffocated by the court’s intervention and that nobody has let her breath. She ends her personal essay with the fundamental constitutional issue, “How long is a person actually supposed to live and who decides that?”

The basic right for a person to choose not be touched or treated without consent, despite a potentially fatal outcome, has been consistently established in prior court decisions and should provide ample protection for Cassandra. Based on Cruzan v. Director, Missouri Dept. of Health, a case involving a woman who was permanently unconscious after a serious car accident, the Supreme Court recognized the right of any person deemed competent to refuse any medical treatment.[vii] The court limited this right by saying that states also have an interest in this matter, whether preserving life, preventing suicide, or upholding the ethical integrity of the medical profession. Therefore, the court decided that a state has the ability to insist on clear and convincing evidence as to the patient’s wishes. This case, along with several others such as Quinlan vs. New Jersey and Bouvia v. Superior ushered the legal acceptance of what is now classified as passively hastening death.[viii] In Quinlan vs. New Jersey (1976), Karen Ann Quinlan stopped breathing and fell into a persistent vegetative state, with full recovery unlikely. Her family fought the courts to remove the respirator, figuring that’s what Karen would have wanted. The New Jersey Supreme Court acknowledged both the right for Quinlan to refuse further treatment and her family’s right to make that decision for her by allowing her respirator to be removed. In Bouvia vs. Superior Court, the court recognized that a 30-year-old woman, who was a victim of cerebral palsy, had the right not be force fed through medical procedures, even if refusal led to her death.[ix] In these cases, the patients, whose prospects for a somewhat meaningful existence were almost certain, were still allowed to end their life by foregoing treatment. Courts hold that an individual’s right to privacy and to be free from unwanted bodily interferences affords an individual the ability to make this decision.

The courts distinguish the countervailing state interests of the preservation of life, the prevention of suicide, the protection of third parties, and upholding the ethical integrity of the medical profession from the ability to limit a patient to forgo medical treatment. However, if a patient is terminally ill, permanently unconscious, or deemed competent by the courts to make rational medical decisions for themselves, these limitations have little effect. Ultimately, the courts view, as stated in Quinlan is that “the state’xs interests weaken and the individual’s right to privacy grows as the degree of bodily invasion increases and the prognosis dims”.[x] They deem that allowing a patient to merely refuse medicine, even when it is life sustaining, is letting the disease or nature take its course, therefore not constituting suicide, which is generally condemned in most state and federal courts.[xi] In addition, they said that the government’s concern over the effect of the medical decision on a third party, such as a child, friend, or other close member, denies the patient of the choice of which risks to take. A person is obligated to evaluate their circumstances and judge what is best whether for themselves or those who might be affected. Ultimately, the right of individuals to make their own medical choice prevails over the interest of a third party.

They also recognize that this strong right does not sacrifice the ethical integrity of the medical profession because finding a cure to any and all disease is not the end goal anymore. Rather than treatment, the dying person is often in need of comfort.[xii] This theme of compassion in doctors is highlighted in the decision of Superintendent of Belchertown State School v. Saikewicz, stating, “if the doctrines of informed consent and right of privacy have as their foundations the right to bodily integrity…and control of one’s own fate, then those rights are superior to the institutional considerations.”[xiii] These exceptions to the limitations on the right to refuse treatment directly apply to Cassandra’s situation. They uphold the basic human principles that not only is an individual obligated to make decisions for themselves, but also the doctor’s are obligated to respect those decisions, as the sole goal of treatment is not recovery for those suffering with severe, incapacitating illnesses. With modern technology affording a patient multiple medicinal routes to take, the patient must make the decision based on what they feel most comfortable with, eliciting the crucial right of privacy and self-determination.

Despite not being explicitly guaranteed as a fundamental right in the constitution, the right to privacy has become accepted in landmark Supreme Court cases in the past. Dating back to 1891 in Union Pacific R. Co. v. Botsford, the court recognized that the right of personal privacy or a “guarantee of certain areas or zones of privacy” [xiv] exists in the constitution. Justice Blackmun in Roe v. Wade ruled that “in varying contexts, the Court or individual Justices have found at least the roots of that right in the First Amendment; in the Fourth and Fifth amendments; in the penumbras of the Bill of Rights; in the Ninth Amendment or in the concept of liberty guaranteed by the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment.”[xv] From here he says that only personal rights that “can be deemed fundamental or implicit in the concept of ordered liberty” [xvi] are included in this guarantee of personal privacy.

Based on this conclusion, Blackmun argues that a statute criminalizing a woman’s right to an abortion is unconstitutional. He points out the detriment that the state would impose upon the pregnant women by denying her choice to terminate her pregnancy. He not only cites physical harms, but the psychological distress that would arise from an unwanted child who is unable to be cared for. This detriment has little distinction from the state refusing Cassandra and her mother’s, or, more generally, other seriously incapacitated patients’, choice as to how they will die. The series of harsh treatments that as Cassandra’s mother says “kills the cancer, but also kills everything else in your body”[xvii] and the loss of autonomy, bodily functions, and the decreasing ability to participate in activities that make life enjoyable should be reason enough for a person to be able to make this private decision.[xviii] In Planned Parenthood v. Casey, the court acknowledges that matters

Involving the most intimate and personal choices a person may make in a lifetime, choices central to personal dignity and autonomy, are central to the liberty protected by the Fourteenth Amendment. At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life. Beliefs about these matters could not define the attributes of personhood were they formed under compulsion of the state.[xix]



The state of Connecticut cannot punish Cassandra for having her own beliefs and concept of existence. If enduring the emotionally and physically painful process of chemotherapy does not feel worth it to Cassandra, the state must respect that and let her be.

Connecticut claims that this recognized right does not apply to Cassandra on the sole basis that she is an incompetent patient since she is a minor (17 years old) and lacks the responsibility to make the decision for herself. However, previous courts have attempted to maintain the principles of autonomy by allowing a surrogate to make decisions regarding medical treatments for an incompetent patient. A surrogate, typically a close family member who best knows the patient and is most likely to act for the patient’s welfare, must apply the “substituted judgment standard,”[xx] by reflecting the patient’s probable wishes. In this case, Cassandra’s mom, acting as her surrogate, has decided to uphold Cassandra’s wishes. Despite being her legal guardian and authorized to make decisions for her daughter, Cassandra’s mother’s voice was discredited by Connecticut as well based on the conclusion that she did not have her daughter’s best interest in mind, accusing her of parental medical neglect. Yet, her mother was simply supporting her daughter’s decision. In fact, she even specifically remembers Cassandra remarking several years earlier that if she ever were to get cancer, she wouldn’t want chemotherapy. Her mother respected Cassandra’s long-standing views on this matter, and sought out second opinions on what Cassandra’s other options were besides chemotherapy. These actions cannot rationally be taken as “neglect” and, as Cassandra’s surrogate, it is within her right to make these decisions anyways.

The state rejects the argument that Cassandra should be given the authority to choose whether or not to undergo chemotherapy based on her maturity. However, their evidence to determine her maturity is founded solely on her behavior in response to the state’s actions.[xxi] Following the initial trial court decision that allowed Cassandra to move back home in her mother’s custody if she submitted to the unwanted treatment, Cassandra decided to run away from home for several days and skipped several court-mandated chemotherapy appointments. An article in the Harvard Crimson notes Connecticut’s inconsistency saying, “a state should not have the right to base the legitimacy of its authority over her on the fact that she challenged the court’s legitimacy in the first place.”[xxii] Essentially, Connecticut’s conviction that neither Cassandra nor her mother is rational in their decision to refuse treatment extinguishes the legitimacy of any right personal autonomy in the first place, as the medical decisions are only deemed rational if they consent to the authority of the state’s decision.[xxiii]

Regardless of her maturity level and competency to make a decision, if Cassandra was born only several months earlier, the state would have no interest in this matter at all since she would be 18 and therefore considered old enough to make rational decisions. This fact is impossible to ignore as it highlights the legitimacy of the state’s interest. While protecting a minor from making a fatal decision is valid, they cannot justify the difference that only a few months would make on an individual’s capability to make a decision. Cassandra’s lawyer points out this key point, asking “Can a smart and knowledgeable 17-year-old make the same choice, for better or for worse, than she would be able to make without state interference nine months from now, when she turns 18?”[xxiv] Once a person turns 18, their decision-making skills do not automatically improve.

Many states have made efforts to counteract this fact by adopting a Mature Minors Doctrine, which holds that some minors possess the maturity to make their own medical decisions, even if they are younger than the age of legal adulthood. As of 2013, seventeen states have recognized some form of this doctrine[xxv]. This law generally gives minors the ability to consent to medical treatment against the wishes of their parents, often relating to giving teenagers the right to get an abortion. Connecticut is one of the states that has not implemented any aspect of this legislation and instead continually refuses to acknowledge that there is no rigid, defining age of maturity. Their complete denial of this inconsistency undermines their claims of governmental interest by not truly evaluating a person’s maturity beyond their age. Courts have ruled that minors can refuse treatment before. In 2007, 14-year-old Dennis Lindberg died of leukemia after refusing to undergo life-saving blood transfusions. The state of Washington allowed him to make the decision for himself because he was a Jehovah’s Witness and blood transfusions are banned in his faith[xxvi]. This is no different from Cassandra. While her decision might not be influenced by her religion, it is still based on her own beliefs on human existence.

Admittedly, a 17-year-old girl deciding to succumb to a disease that will most likely end her life is an agonizing thought. Yet, it must be recognized that no matter what, death is one of the most mystifying aspects of human life. Ultimately, it has to be up to the individual to rationalize their concept of it for themselves. Permitting Cassandra to “form and live in accordance with her own conception of a good life, at least within the bounds of justice and consistent with others doing so as well”[xxvii] is a right that the state simply cannot repeal. If Cassandra would rather succumb to her death than endure the “poison”[xxviii] that would be put into her body to counteract her dying and the emotional toll it would take on her, then she should be able to. The state’s interest in her maturity to handle this based on her age is essentially arbitrary and their failure to yield to her wishes as well as her legal guardian’s sacrifices both of their liberty altogether. It reveals that regardless of whether someone is capable of making a rational decision or not, if it is not in accordance with the ideas of the authority, then the authority may disregard it. Connecticut’s actions, despite its good intentions of safeguarding health and protecting a minor, cross personal boundaries that destroy Cassandra’s individual autonomy and lack any compelling justification. This case and along with others cited throughout this paper clearly illustrate that a governmental interference with a noble cause, if left unchecked and pushed too far, can cause more damage than good and ultimately threaten an individual’s inherent right to free will and independence—two core values fundamental to a democratic society.

---

[i] Josh Kovner, “Teen Fighting Chemo Order” Hartford Courant, January 03, 2015.

[ii] Ibid

[iii] Ibid

[iv] Ibid

[v] Josh Kovner, “Teen’s Mother: It’s her choice” Hartford Courant, January 04, 2015.

[vi] Elizabeth A. Harris, “Connecticut Teenager With Cancer Loses Court Fight to Refuse Chemotherapy,” The New York Times, January 09, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/nyregion/connecticut-teenager-with-cancer-loses-court-fight-to-refuse-chemotherapy.html?_r=0 (accessed April 4, 2015)

[vii] Alan Meisel. "Right to Die, Policy and Law." Encyclopedia of Bioethics. Ed. Stephen G. Post. 3rd ed. Vol. 4. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. 2385-2396. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.

[viii] Ibid

[ix] Ibid

[x] Ibid

[xi] Vacco v. Quill, 521 U.S. 793 (1997)

[xii] Meisel, “Right to Die, Policy and Law”.

[xiii] Ibid

[xiv] Roe v. Wade 1973

[xv] Ibid

[xvi] Ibid

[xvii] WW I Chattanooga, “Cassandra’s Catch-22” The Economist Newspaper, January 14, 2015,http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/01/medical-consent (accessed April 8)

[xviii] Meisel, “Right to Die, Policy and Law”.

[xix] Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).

[xx] Meisel, “Right to Die, Policy and Law”.

[xxi] Risham Dhillon “Raw Truths, Instinct, and Justice: The Cassandra C. Case” The Harvard Crimson, January 28, 2015, http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/1/28/cassandra-c-mature-minor/ (accessed April 1, 2015)

[xxii]Ibid

[xxiii] Chattanooga, “Cassandra’s Catch-22”.

[xxiv] Josh Kovner, “Lawyer: Teen’s Prognosis Good” Hartford Courant, January 6, 2015.

[xxv] Ibid

[xxvi] Megan Thielking, “Why a 17-year-old with cancer if being forced to undergo chemo against her will,” VOX, January 8, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/1/8/7513423/why-a-17-year-old-with-cancer-is-being-forced-to-undergo-chemo (accessed April 24th, 2015).

[xxvii]Simon Canick, "Constitutional Aspects of Physician-Assisted Suicide After Lee v. Oregon" (1997). Faculty Scholarship. Paper 150. http://open.wmitchell.edu/facsch/150

[xxviii] Kovner, “Teen Mother: It’s her choice”.

Bibliography

Canick, Simon. "Constitutional Aspects of Physician-Assisted Suicide After Lee v.

Oregon" (1997). Faculty Scholarship. Paper 150. http://open.wmitchell.edu/facsch/150

Harris A, Elizabeth. “Connecticut Teenager With Cancer Loses Court FIgh to Refuse

Chemotherapy,” The New York Times, January 09, 2015, http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/10/nyregion/connecticut-teenager-with-cancer-loses-court-fight-to-refuse-chemotherapy.html?_r=0 (accessed April 4, 2015)

Kovner, Josh. “Teen Fighting Chemo Order” Hartford Courant, January 03, 2015.

Kovner, Josh. “Teen’s Mother: It’s her choice” Hartford Courant, January 04, 2015.

Kovner, Josh. “Lawyer: Teen’s Prognosis Good” Hartford Courant, January 6, 2015.

Meisel, Alan. "Right to Die, Policy and Law." Encyclopedia of Bioethics. Ed. Stephen G.

Post. 3rd ed. Vol. 4. New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2004. 2385-2396. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 22 Mar. 2015.

Planned Parenthood v. Casey, 505 U.S. 833 (1992).

Roe v. Wade, 410 U.S. 113 (1973).

Dhillon,Risham. “Raw Truths, Instinct, and Justice: The Cassandra C. Case” The

Harvard Crimson, January 28, 2015, http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2015/1/28/cassandra-c-mature-minor/ (accessed April 1, 2015)

Salem Press Encyclopedia. “Euthanasia Debate.”

Euthanasia debate.

(accessed March 28)

Thielking, Megan. “Why a 17-year-old with cancer if being forced to undergo chemo

against her will,” VOX, January 8, 2015, http://www.vox.com/2015/1/8/7513423/why-a-17-year-old-with-cancer-is-being-forced-to-undergo-chemo (accessed April 24th, 2015).

Vacco v. Quill, 521 U.S. 793 (1997)

WW I Chattanooga “Cassandra’s Catch-22” The Economist Newspaper, January 14,

 2015,

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2015/01/medical-consent (accessed April 8)

Today's Adolph Hitler

As the self-styled Islamic State of Iraq and Syria pushes its offensive further south through Kurdish Iraq, it makes clearer its fundamental nature. It is not a religious movement, nor even a political movement fueled by religious values. Instead, it is a totalitarian movement reminiscent more of Adolph Hitler than Osama bin Laden. Its leader, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is an armed thug with very little religious intent. His goal is total control over a population, and he is willing to use fabricated Islamic law to get what he wants. 

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: more Hitler than bin Laden
from Wikipedia

As Scott Stewart wrote for the website Stratfor, the Islamic State has managed to build itself into a formidable fighting organization, but it has forsaken any practical efforts to govern or gain popular support.

Stewart writes that 

So far, the Islamic State has been able to claim its battlefield successes as proof of Allah's blessing. However, it has not yet received the global recognition and acceptance it hoped its declaration of a caliphate would produce. The number of jihadist groups swearing allegiance to the Islamic State has remained quite limited to date.

Zarqawi rapes and enslaves women, executes Shi'ites and Yazidis, destroys infrastructure and rejects any suggestion that its actions might be destructive. Zarqawi is a bully in the largest sense, just as Hitler was, using his willingness to be audaciously atrocious as his favorite tool. Fear is his most effective weapon, and he preys on the ignorance of his own people to convince them that he stands for something bigger than his own power.

President Obama's decision to bomb ISIS positions over the weekend was a start, and while I sympathize with his desire to exercise restraint, this really is the first Munich since 1938. This group needs to be stopped.

NBC Should Dump Dungy -- He's a Distraction

Tony Dungy earned his fame as a football coach first, but since he retired from that job he has been treated as some kind of ethical guru by the meatheads at ESPN and the NFL Network. Dungy stood up for Michael Vick after Vick was convicted of running a dog fighting ring in which animals were brutally, viciously killed, and represented the early wave of black head coaches who had been denied equal treatment because of baseless assumptions about the connection between their ability and their color.

Now Dungy says that he would not have drafted Michael Sam, the SEC Defensive Player of the Year, because Sam came as gay before the draft and therefore would be "a distraction." To clear things up, Dungy said it was not Sam's homosexuality itself that would be a problem, but the "media attention" it would get.

Michael Sam 

(Francis Page Jr./Creative Commons) at http://www.neontommy.com/news/2014/02/why-do-you-care-if-michael-sam-gay

Media attention? 

The only reason the NFL exists is to get media attention. Tony Dungy's sole remaining employment relating to football is as a commentator on NBC. The NFL is, itself, nothing but a giant, expensive distraction. Every day is a "media circus" because the NFL makes all its money from television coverage.

If Dungy wants to avoid distractions, tell him to quit his job.

The "Islamic State" is Neither

At the core of Muhammad's life was the quest for an all-in-one society, in which politics, religion, art, and economics all flow from one, central authority derived from the word of God. It is not anti-Muslim or anti-Islamic to say that Muhammad did not seek freedom of religion or pluralism; he believed he had found the answer, and he wanted to apply it.

For the "hyper-violent" adherents of the group called the Islamic State to call for such a thing, then, is deeply rooted in the traditions and philosophy of Islamic culture. Muhammad did the same, and he fought more than one serious, literal battle to achieve its creation. That he succeeded in doing so is one of the things that sets Islam apart from other world religions, and it infuses the faithful with a distinct, though not unique political mindset (one not at all different from that of most Israelis.)

But what would the government of such a group look like? For one, it would erase or diminish the lines drawn more-or-less arbitrarily by the Sykes-Picot Agreement of the early years of the last century. It would be exclusively Sunni, as Iran is fully aware, and authoritarian at least. It would not be open to diversity, and it would not be an especially willing partner with the United States in maintaining Western interests.

So far, IS has spent all its time rebelling against the status quo, and so has not established anything like a state as yet. It governs nothing, eve as it expands the reach of its military domination and intimidation. Most commentators assume that it will be takfiri and brutal. Al Qaeda itself has disavowed many of its methods as too nasty, and while that group has ulterior motives for such remarks, it's still saying a lot that Zawahiri flinches at their violence.

http://www.eiilir.eu/

If these rebels act anything like takfiris elsewhere, they are not leading in the tradition of Islam. Muslim tradition allows excommunications and attacks on apostates, but Muhammad was a statesman as well as a profit, and he impose strict rules of evidence and procedure on such practices. Here is the Q'uran itself:

O you who believe! When you go (to fight) in the Cause of God, verify (the truth), and say not to anyone who greets you (by embracing Islam): "You are not a believer"; seeking the perishable goods of the worldly life. There are much more profits and booties with God. Even as he is now, so were you yourselves before till God conferred on you His Favours (i.e. guided you to Islam), therefore, be cautious in discrimination. God is Ever Well-Acquainted with what you do. (4:94)

That is, one can not simply wander around the desert killing people on his own initiative, as these people have done. Until they prove themselves to be true Muslims, then, they will gain no legitimacy, and no statehood.

On the Slippery Slope

The majority in the Supreme Court's decision in Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius assured us that its ruling was very narrow, and would not exempt for-profit corporations from anti-discrimination laws, for example, on religious grounds.

But within days, it issued another order that called those reassurances into question, and non-profit organizations have read the decision as exempting them from a whole host of regulations.

Is this was a "conservative" court does?

Once Again, the "Conservatives" of the Supreme Court Go Wild

Samuel Alito likes to call himself a conservative, as does Antonin Scalia. Once again, however, both these men jumped the rails in the majority opinion in Hobby Lobby v. Sebelius. Essentially, they announced that Congress should have chosen a different way to accomplish their goals. The corporation of Hobby Lobby, they said, had First Amendment rights to exercise religious beliefs (a novel interpretation that no true judicial conservative would endorse, even if social conservatives love it), and Congress chose a method of regulating health care that interfered too much with those rights. They did not assert that Congress had no power to legislate as they did, but they did propose an alternative way of going about it they liked better.

I don't like the decision for a number of reasons, not the least of which being that I find the claim that birth control is tantamount to abortion to be absurd. I'm especially annoyed, however, with the hypocrisy of Alito, Scalia and Thomas and the damage it is doing to our system.

Muslims Did Perpetrate the Attacks of September 11, 2001 -- and it's OK to say so

Islam does not cause terrorism. It did not cause the attacks on the World Trade Center in 2001.

The people who perpetrated those attacks did claim, however, to be doing it in the name -- and for the cause -- of their warped, misinformed view of Islam. Osama bin Laden and the leaders of al Qaeda who planned the attacks declared war on the United States because it threatened their vision of what the world ought to be like: a constricted, misogynistic, brutal theocracy.

Most Muslims do not, and never did, support the policies and actions of the terrorist group. They do not recognize as their own the message that bin Laden espoused.

When we say that Muslims attacked Manhattan, and they did so out of misplaced religious zeal, we are not condemning all Muslims and we certainly are not condemning Islam. We are telling the story as it happened.

That's why the objections to a short (approximately seven-minute) video at the September 11 Museum in Manhattan are badly misplaced. People worry that visitors to the museum will mistakenly believe that all Muslims are to blame if Islam is mentioned at all. If that's true, then we have problems (and I am sure we do), but they are not ones that can be solved by excluding the information.

I suppose that the purpose of "interfaith panels" like the one lodging the complaint is to reflect sensitivities like these. But I do not understand  -- and find a bit distasteful -- the position that we should not mention the stated motives of the people who staged the attacks. It seems fundamentally dishonest, and therefore not what museums should do.

Can Corporations Really Have 1st Amendment Protections for Religion?

First Amendment jurisprudence gets more bizarre by the month under the current Supreme Court. First, in its Citizens United decision, the Court found that corporations have free speech rights. The conclusion there means not just that corporations can express opinions in ordinary situations, but that the government must protect such expression except under the most extraordinary circumstances. We all have an obligation to corporations in this scheme of things.

Now the Court appears to be open to the idea that corporations have religious rights, too.

We're not talking here about the right of individuals who own companies, but the companies themselves. The company at issue in Sebelius v. Hobby Lobby wants to refuse to pay for any insurance that would allow an employee to be reimbursed for contraception like IUD's. The owners say that they object to such measures on religious grounds, and that the Affordable Care Act would therefore violate their rights by providing such insurance.

Now, what if they made the same claim about vaccinations? That is, not only do the owners not want to be vaccinated or have their children vaccinated, but they do not want to be required to pay for insurance that would allow their employees to be vaccinated. Under this reasoning, they could claim religious exemption from almost any regulation simply by applying a twice-removed impact on them.

Note that the owners still want to distinguish themselves from their company for the purposes of liability and taxes, but not when it comes to the 1st Amendment.

Just like the recent Arizona law about religious rights in hiring, this argument is nonsense. If the First Amendment can be made to mean everything, it is made to mean nothing. It's dangerous and foolish to water our rights down like this.

Why (Most) Abortions are Not Immoral

The most compelling moral argument against abortion centers on the right of the unborn fetus  to be protected by the wider society against its mother in the case that it mother seeks to kill it.* Helpless or innocent people, especially, deserve our attention to their rights because they can not always defend themselves, so this position carries enormous weight.

This argument is at least diminished, if not negated, of course, in cases in which women were raped or molested, resulting in pregnancy.** It seems to be completely defeated in cases in which the life of the mother is at risk.

At bottom of my position is the assumption that adult women have the same right to make medical decisions about their bodies that adult men have. No one should object, that is, if a woman has her appendix removed.

So what makes a fetus different from an appendix?

It's not "humanity." The appendix has the same claim to being "human" that a fetus does -- all the DNA, all discernible objective material.

It must be that the fetus is a "person." So what makes a person?

In every decision we make in life, we must weigh priorities. Many such choices entail taking one thing more seriously than another. We cross the median line on the road in order to avoid hitting a pedestrian because we take our obligation to avoid harm to the pedestrian more seriously than our legal obligation to stay on our side of the street.

One way to "measure" personhood, though inexact, is to ask what priority we would give the life in question. Analogies are always risky, but take this one: if you were driving down the road and had to choose between colliding with a human walking across it or colliding with a chicken walking across it, you might choose the chicken. Why? Because you believe that the walking human has moral priority over the walking chicken. The human is more of a person. She has some quality or set of qualities that distinguish her from the chicken. Maybe it's because she is sentient, or has emotions, or can anticipate pain. Maybe it's just because she is more like us. All of these standards are problematic at some level, but in the end they are what we have.

Abortions require prioritization. The woman choosing an abortion must decide that the potential person in her body is less important than something else. The fetus, in almost every way, is more like the chicken than the woman herself. They both are human, but the fetus is not sentient or emotional or capable of anticipation. Furthermore, at the moment of the decision, it is attached to the woman and no less part of her body than the woman's appendix.

So the question is this: who should be allowed to set the priorities in such a case. The burden seems to be on those who want to dictate to the woman. Why should anyone be allowed to decide what medical procedures she can consider for her safety or even her comfort? Those who want to abolish abortions entirely must defend a deep and wide intrusion into the woman's life, and therefore must explain why the fetus is more of a person than the woman.

In some cases, I suppose such an argument could be made, but certainly not in all, and definitely not in a case in which the life or health of the mother is at stake. As far as I can see, therefore, allowing abortions is the moral things to do.


* I have no use whatsoever for arguments against contraception, or for the rights of the father, for example. In other contexts, those positions may have some merit, but they fall so short in the question of most abortions that they are not interesting to me in the least.
** I have even less use for the argument that a woman who was raped or molested is somehow responsible for her pregnancy. Anyone making that case loses the privilege of taking a stand on behalf of the fetus solely on the grounds of complete incoherence, if not dishonesty.

Why Abortion Ought to be Legal

Setting aside for now the very difficult question of abortion rights, to which I will return later, it should be obvious by to everyone that abortion cannot be abolished as a practical matter. Women have been ending unwanted pregnancies for as long as they have had pregnancies, and they will continue to do so. One can no more end this practice than end unprotected sex in all its forms.

As Eyal Press writes in the most recent edition of The New Yorker, the consequences of this fact are dire if the state suppresses women's access to safe abortion procedures. When skilled, respected doctors are driven from the field by violent protests or tight government restrictions, they resort to unskilled, un-respected practitioners. These people may be unscrupulous or they may just be bad at their jobs, but either way they create hazards for women -- and therefore for children and families, and therefore for all of us -- that would not exist if abortions were treated as ordinary medical treatment. More, not fewer, late-term abortions occur when governments make it difficult for women to get this help.

Stephen Brigham, the incompetent doctor profiled by Press, should not be in business. But the market exists for him because their are not enough better options.This fundamental fact ought to be the government's focus, no matter whether you approve of abortion rights or not.

Jason Whitlock on Illegitimacy and Society

This column is among the best I have read on any social issue in a long time. It is concise, precise, direct and entirely free from nonsensical party affiliation. I hope it gets a lot of attention.

The highlights:

"Dez Bryant's inability to control his emotions is not a racial issue. It's a family dysfunction issue...

"But the reality is, Dez Bryant is swirling in a cultural tsunami every bit as destructive and powerful as climate change.

Let's call it 'Hurricane Illegitimacy.'

Its victims are primarily black and brown, but Hurricane Illegitimacy is a not black or brown problem. It's an American problem that is denied and exacerbated on the left and mischaracterized and exploited on the right.

Like climate change, Hurricane Illegitimacy is powered by man-made factors:

1. A lack of proper restraints on welfare entitlement programs for single mothers and fathers.

2. America's bogus war on poor people who use and sell drugs.

3. Turning incarceration into a for-profit business model.

4. A refusal to recognize that investment in the education of our poorest and weakest citizens could strengthen our entire society.

5. Our collective lack of courage and resolve to combat popular-culture forces that celebrate, normalize and profit from baby-mama and criminal culture...

"The seeds for Hurricane Illegitimacy were planted in the late 1960s as backlash for the civil rights advances won by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Too much of this current generation of young people are the unwitting victims of America's unwillingness to protect the sanctity of family. The people who deny this obvious reality are every bit as delusional as climate-change deniers...

"The normalization of illegitimacy is so pervasive in black America that people are afraid to publicly address its dangers and consequences out of fear of being labeled a sellout or a racist. It's been so normalized that some people honestly don't believe it's a problem.

Ignorance is blissful and deadly. Ignorance is why we see Dez Bryant misbehave and automatically think race rather than family.

Ignorance is why we don't understand that the black family structure thrived and survived until our lawmakers launched a drug war, mass incarceration and shortsighted welfare policies.

Ignorance is why we've failed to object forcefully to pop-culture forces using their unprecedented power to promote hedonism as the ultimate high over family evolution.

Dez Bryant's behavior and our reaction to it are just symptoms of a much bigger problem."

I don't ordinarily quote at such length, and I hope this does not come as outright theft. Whitlock's words need wide circulation.

The "Muhammad Riots" and Essential Values

from allvoices.com

Muslims across Northern Africa rioted last week because they saw an American-made video depicting Muhammad as a homosexual and an idiot. Coming as they do so closely on the heels of the Arab Spring and the recent elections in Egypt, the protests -- many of them violent -- raise serious questions about the clash of values between "Western" and "Islamic" societies.

I have never bought Samuel Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations" thesis, in which he argues that the future of diplomacy will be focus on conflict between essential cultural groups. My problem with his argument is that he provides no useful definition of "civilization," despite his efforts to do so, and therefore can offer no universal rubric as he claims.

But there is no question that the people rioting in Cairo last week do not share American priorities, and Americans do not understand what the protesters are saying as a result. David Kirkpatrick said it best in the Times:

When the protests against an American-made online video mocking the Prophet Muhammad exploded in about 20 countries, the source of the rage was more than just religious sensitivity, political demagogy or resentment of Washington, protesters and their sympathizers here said. It was also a demand that many of them described with the word “freedom,” although in a context very different from the term’s use in the individualistic West: the right of a community, whether Muslim, Christian or Jewish, to be free from grave insult to its identity and values.

Many people, when interviewed, simply would not accept the claim that the US government does not ban Holocaust deniers. They assume that every community has the right -- even the obligation -- to ban expression that it finds offensive. The failure to impose such a ban suggests to these Muslims an implicit endorsement of the expression.

We can never resolve this "disconnect." Muslims will not change their views on freedom of expression, and I certainly hope Americans will not change theirs. Both sides have merit, but the American position is, frankly, better.

It is the job of leaders, however, no navigate these differences wisely. Some clashes must result in serious conflict, and some must not. Distinguishing between the two is the essence of statesmanship. So far, President Obama has done well by exerting pressure on Egyptian and other leaders to maintain control while not ratcheting up the rhetoric in a way that will only exacerbate the problem.

Faith and Accountability

In When God Talks Back, TM Luhrmann describes her study of American "charismatic" evangelical groups. She spent several years embedded as an anthropologist in a few of these communities, and gives a thorough and generally sympathetic view of them in the book. Her sympathy, such as it is, stems not so much from shared beliefs, but from her scrupulous efforts at scholarly neutrality -- a product, as she reminds us time and again, of her training as an anthropologist.

Over the course of my own life, I have become ever more firmly atheist as I think more carefully about the meaning of a belief in God in the sense usually meant by "religion." My work as an undergraduate focused in part on the nature of religious belief (specifically in early Mormons) and I am not fool enough to claim any certainty on the question of what God is or is not. Religious faith, like all matters of conscience, can not be disputed objectively, and therefore all serious systems of belief must be afforded a high degree of respect and deference. God does not talk to me, and I don't honestly believe that he talks to anybody (not the least because I don't think anything as large as God could be gender-specific) but I am more than willing to listen to people who say they can converse with the deity. I am very much interested in what they mean by the claim and what consequence they think it has.

And therein lies the rub. Luhrmann tells several stories about congregants who abdicate all responsibility for the consequences for their beliefs. Near the end of the book she offers an account of an exchange between several women in a prayer group. One woman says her daughter refused to wear "floaties" while swimming because "if I had gone down to the bottom of the pool God would have whispered in your heart and told you I was down there." [p.331] The mother and some her friends then laugh, and one even says "I would have said 'Honey, I know this God. You wear those floaties.'" But one member of the group was offended and suggested "we all ought to believe in God like that little girl." In another story a woman refuses to move out of an apartment she can't afford or take a job she does not like because she believes God wants her to be entirely dependent on him. In other words, God is a sadistic enabler.

That kind of stuff bothers me because it leads to irresponsible behavior. Believe what you want, but don't think that it absolves you of all accountability in my eyes or in anyone else's. Only the self-involved and self-indulgent can find a way to justify a staunch faith in God's desire to let them off the hook. Even Muhammad said "trust in God and tether your camel." And if the true believer goes to Congress and argues that we should not worry about climate change because God will take care of it and/or we ant the apocalypse, then his self-involved faith interferes with my efforts to clean up a mess.