Sign me up for DAMM, Part II

Predictably, this story is giving neo-prohibitionists and their self-righteous allies a chance to wring their hands about "underage drinking." Of course, what is left unsaid is that 17 year-olds rarely die from binge-drinking related accidents in countries where the legal drinking age is 18 or younger, and drinking of those below the legal age is acceptable when supervised by an adult. It is also unstated that hardly, if ever, does anyone, anywhere fall out of a 25th story window while high on marijuana.

Just When You Thought the Talk About "Privilege" Couldn't Get Any More Stupid...

Along comes this: http://www.adonismirror.com/09152009_leader_pot_whites_only.htm.

So Richard Leader thinks that taking a courageous stand against an unjust law is an act of "white male privilege":

The stunt has white-male written all over it. I should know: I’m a white male myself. You can see it in his straight-faced claim that he didn’t do it for attention. You can see it in his imagination that a simple school project made him a true actor in the political process.

Well, for one thing, I can say that Ian Barry is a hero and a patriot much like one of my long-time heroes who is of African Descent: Ed Forchion, aka N.J. Weedman.

But, maybe the author of Adonis Mirror, Leader, does have a point. After all, the white people who participated in the Montgomery Bus Boycott knew that they would not face penalties as severe as those whose rights they were demanding be respected. Same with those white folks who marched in various Civil Rights marches throughout the 60's. Or those men who dared to stand up for feminism back when it was about equal rights and not female supremacy, like today (Of course the men, would only face lesser penalties in terms of social sanctions; women then, as now and always, got treated with kid gloves by the legal system). When I, as a disabled teenager was being bullied by non-disabled, or less disabled teenagers, I would have been grateful for a non-disabled teenager to use his or her "able-bodied/able-minded" privilege to stand up for my rights. I did not think that the people who did or would have done these things were arrogant assholes rubbing everyone else's noses in their massive privilege, but then I obviously don't know as much about "oppression-privilege" politics as the all-knowing Leader (pun not intended -see comment).

I seem to remember reading somewhere that one of the obligations of privilege is to fight for the rights of those do not have it and cannot stand up for themselves. I didn't think that standing up for the rights of the less privileged was a bad thing if you did it in a non-patronizing way that showed solidarity with the oppressed. Well, thank Cthulhu that we have people like Richard Leader to tell us how wrong those notions are.

Edit: I decided to edit out the instances where I made fun of Richard Leader's name as this distracts from the seriousness of the issue. Besides, while he is an arrogant know-it-all who thinks he can tell everyone else how to run our lives, Leader did not deserve to be personally attacked. For that I apologize.

Do Whatever You Want with Your Own Body but...

With Obama's speech to and honorary degree from Notre Dame bringing abortion back into the news, I have decided to put my thoughts on the issue into words. This is as much a matter of clarifying my position to myself as it is of creating a post for others to read. While on most issues my opinion is definite and unconflicted, abortion does bring up many mixed feelings and opposing thoughts that I can't quite reconcile.

When I was an undergraduate in college, I was a member of the campus pro-life group. I was also a practicing Catholic then, which I no longer am (I still believe in God, but do not see any particular religion that I know of as having most of the answers). Still, even then I was mostly libertarian, though I didn't feel strongly enough about my libertarian position on social issues to vote for Libertarians instead of Republicans. I did then, as I do now, see abortion as different from issues such as drugs, pornography, and prostitution. Using recreational drugs (including but certainly not limited to alcohol and tobacco), using and acting in or be photographed in pornography, engaging in prostitution - whether as the prostitute or the john, not to mention riding in a car without using a seat belt or riding a motorcycle without a helmet are all examples of choosing what to do with your own body. (Note: the last two are things I would never do as there are less painful ways to commit suicide than car and motorcycle crashes, but I support other people's rights to fly through windshields anid split their heads when they land after being thrown off a motorbike). I support both women and men doing whatever they want with their own bodies. But a fetus is not part of a woman's body, it is a separate being with its own DNA, and within two months, its own blood type, heartbeat, and brain. To call it a parasite might be accurate depending on your definition, though it is no more a biological parasite than minor children are economic parasites. While it may cause temporary symptoms of illness, it is not really detrimental the woman's health, as would be a virus or a tapeworm. It is not an invader but rather something the woman's body is designed to host. Abortion is not a matter of doing what she wants with her own body but a matter of her having control over the life and death of a distinct individual that just so happens to live within her body.

To put it another way, drugs, prostitution, and most other so-called vices are victimless in and of themselves. Victimization may occur as an unintended consequence but it is not intrinsic to the products or services themselves. And most of these victimizations - drug dealers shooting rivals over "turf", drug users stealing to support their habits, pimps and johns beating prostitutes, prostitutes robbing johns, pimps taking all of the money prostitutes earn instead of a reasonable cut, etc. - are direct results of the fact that these things are illegal. Take away the black market and allow the prices to be determined by a free market, and you take away a lot of the motivation for criminal behavior around these otherwise peaceful activities. And the few criminals left as vendors or customers of these businesses could be reported by the honest people who no longer had a reason to fear the police. In any case, these unfortunate consequences are by no means the purpose of drugs and prostitution, any more than air pollution is the purpose of a car. With abortion killing something, whether or not you consider it human, is the very definition of the act.

I also think that the death penalty, while not without its problems is much more justifiable than abortion. It is true that a an innocent person could be killed, and. since this sentence is irreversable, that is a reason why I have some misgivings about the death penalty. Still, there is no question in mind that some people deserve to die (anyone who kills innocent people for pleasure, or one who kills in the act of committing another crime i.e. felony murder). So while the death penalty targets those who have met a fairly high standard to be proven guilty of terrible crimes, abortion targets those who are known to be innocent. Similarly, in a just war where only combatants and the ruling party (or leaders of the insurgency) are targeted but civilians get caught in the crossfire, this is quite different from intentionally ending the life of an innocent being. As for deliberately targeting innocents to bring a swift end to the war and save millions of other lives - as in Hiroshima and Nagasaki - this is problematic, though I view it somewhat like using abortion to save the life of the mother (which is the one case where I do unequivocally support abortion during any stage of pregnancy).

There is one thing that I do support, which I can't help noticing is similar to abortion - animal slaughter. I have stated my postion on killing animals for food before. I am not sure about killing animals just for their skins (or furs), though I'm defienitely not opposed to using skin when it is left over from an animal that's been used for meat (as with leather). I do have a problem with killing for pure recreation or trophy hunting, but I support the rights of hunters who eat the animals they harvest.

Meat is a natural part of the human diet, as it is for the diet of chimpanzees, our closest relatives in the animal kingdom. I don't doubt that some people can be healthy on a vegetarian or vegan diet, but different people have different dietary needs. For example the Dali Lama was a vegetarian, but began eating meat when his doctors told him he needed it. I also dont' see the difference between people eating cattle, pigs ,sheep,and chickens, and mountain lions or wolves doing the same. Or fish eating other fish, lions eating zebras, or any of thousands (millions?) of other predator species doing what they do in the natural world. Well, there is one difference, people, at least sometimes make efforts to minmize or even eliminate the suffering of their prey. (cf. Temple Grandin and the Animal Welfare Institute).

This all leaves me with the question: should human fetuses have more rights than animals? This is something that I feel should be a yes, but at this time I cannot come up with a logical reason why. And, while I consider abortion immoral and drug use perfectly moral, I do see an attempt to enforce abortion laws as having the potential to cause the police state environment that has grown from the War on Drugs and the War on Terror to become even more repressive. So for now at least, I won't be fighting to change the laws on abortion or basing my vote for a candidate on this issue (regardless of which side he or she stands on).

Still, I would ask that those who are considering abortion because of a birth defect or disability, as well as those who are minorities to consider the genocidal implications. In any case, its fair to say that not all pro-lifers fit the sterotype of prudish right-wing religious fanatics. Some might say it is hypocritical to acknowledge that while calling anti-porn, anti-prostitution, anti-BDSM feminists "anti-sex", but based on the total of all that I've read that the radfems have written and their treatment of people who disagree with them about sexual matters, I think it's a fair assessment.

PS Happy Memorial Day all veterans, those currently serving in the armed forces, and their families.

Sign me up for DAMM!

The story of the college presidents supporting lowering the drinking age is old news by now, but when the news first came out I was too angry at some of the arguments around it to write about it calmly and rationally. Anyway, the news has been dominated by the snoozer Democrat convention. Yes, there's the war between Russia and Georgia but I haven't read or heard anything that makes a compelling case for me taking either side. And there's Hurricane Gustav, but there's not much I can write about that, except to say that I hope this time people have learned to take action on their own rather than wait for the government to come to the rescue. Of course. there's John McCain's VP pick, Sarah Palin, who I hear is somewhat libertarian leaning. So now instead of being 100% convinced to write in Ron Paul, I'm only 95% convinced with a 5% possibility that I might vote for McCain. Interesting but not significant.

So, back to the topic at hand. We all know that prohibition doesn't stop the activity it's meant to stop, whether it's substance use, a particular sexual practice, or another form of recreation, such as gambling. In the case of alcohol we acknowledged this as a society 76 years ago. So it would seem that the college presidents were just accepting reality by suggesting that a policy that is a proven failure with population at large could ever succeed when it was aimed at a group of people who are legally treated as adults in every other way.

Of course, prohibition has only been a failure in the sense that it fails to eliminate the targeted activity, causes needless suffering, increases crime, and generally costs more lives than it saves. Prohibitions of all kinds have been successful in increasing the power of the state and turning more people into second-class citizens for the self-righteous to scapegoat and look down upon. That is what MADD and similar organizations (such as the Partnership for a Drug Free America) are really all about. At the grassroots level there may be some dupes, with critical thinking deficiencies, who believe that they are really helping "THE CHILDREN™," but the leaders of these organizations know that their real mission is to get on the Big Government gravy train while patting themselves on the back about how superior they are to all of those dirty drunks and druggies.

After all, why would the prohibitionists ignore the fact that most of the rest of the world has drinking ages of 18 or lower (the major exceptions being the barbaric Islamofascist countries that ban alcohol altogether). While drunk driving fatality rates compared to the U.S. are higher in some of the countries with lower drinking ages, they are lower in many of the others. (Note also that South Korea with the highest level of drunk driving fatality rates has a drinking age of 19, lower than in the U.S. but higher than average). Obviously, being allowed to drink before age 21 does not automatically turn every young adult into a booze guzzling motorized murderer. But what about the studies that show drunk driving deaths are down among 18-20 year-olds since the federal government used the federal highway funds to blackmail the states that did not already have a 21 drinking age to enact one? (And by the way shame on the states for being so dependent on federal funding that they could allow themselves to be bullied this way). Well, I don't know the exact year that the last of the states (or the District of Columbia) knuckled under to the federal browbeaters but I know it was sometime in the late 80s or early 90s. Drunk driving among 18-20 year-olds probably came down since then AS IT DID FOR THE POPULATION IN GENERAL! It could be harsher penalties and better enforcement of drunk driving laws (Generally I support these, though random checkpoints are harassment and should be replaced by monitoring drivers showing signs of recklessness; also 0.08 is unnecessarily low as a BAC level cutoff, significant impairment does not result until BAC reaches 0.15. Still, it is true that before the 1980s police, prosecutors, and judges were often too lenient with drunk drivers). Besides the laws there is a much greater awareness of the dangers of drunk driving and much more social disapproval of DUI than there used to be.

Not that all young people will act responsibly, even if they do know the dangers. One of the points the college administrators brought up is the issue of binge drinking; binge drinkers don't show a lot of concern for their own health and safety, nevermind that of others. But as the school officials point out, binge drinking largely takes place in a prohibitionist atmosphere, where alcohol is a forbidden fruit and contempt for rules that deserve contempt often leads to contempt for societal norms and standards that should be respected. There is no doubt that binge drinking and other unsafe drinking practices could be reduced if 18-20 year-old drinking was allowed to come out of the underground and into the light of day. For those still worried about DUI, how about requiring breathalyzer devices that prevent a drunk driver from starting the car on all vehicles driven by an under 21 driver (it goes against my grain to suggest a new law, but I can accept one if it means the repeal of a much worse existing law).

But even if lowering the drinking age (possibly combined with other policies) lowered the total number of alcohol-related deaths (including the drunk driving deaths) to zero I doubt that that would matter to MADD and its allies. As I have said elsewhere, like the debates about medical marijuana, or opiates to relieve the terminally ill and chronic pain sufferers, any amount of horrible suffering is worthwhile if it prevents just one person from experiencing government disapproved pleasure. The anti-pleasure lobbyists will always have an excuse to continue their holier-than-thou quest for constant nanny state expansion. Which is why, though they are a fictional group, and I would never seriously encourage drunk driving, I am tempted to say "Sign me up for Drunks Against Mad Mothers!"