Politics & Culture

Grand Rapids Isn't Portand

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It’s increasingly obvious that the George Heartwell regime has embraced the New Urbanism and has slowly but surely set into motion a secret, grand plot to turn Grand Rapids into the Portland, Ore., of the Midwest.
OK, so maybe I exaggerate. But recent trends in my fair city do offer grounds for concern. Consider:

  1. Revision Division. One of the most singularly idiotic changes I’ve witnessed downtown is the “Revision Division” project. Picture it: Division Avenue — the primary north/south surface-street corridor on the east side of the river, and the only one that extends uninterrupted from the southern to the northern suburbs — has been a four- or five-lane road for many years. Much of the street runs parallel to US-131 (in fact, Division is the 131 business loop). Over the last two years, Division has been consolidated from two lanes in each direction, to one lane in each direction, between Wealthy Street and Oakes Street. In other words, the major north-south surface artery is reduced to one lane precisely in the downtown area where two lanes prove most useful. The rationale for this change? To add bike lanes. You know how many cyclists I see on Division? For locals, the question answers itself — in that stretch of road, you’re more likely to see homeless panhandlers than cyclists —  but unasked is this: Why, if dedicated bike lanes are so damned important, didn’t the city redevelop less-trafficked nearby streets, thus decreasing the relative risk to cyclists while minimizing the effect on drivers? The first time US-131 completely shuts down at the S-curve because of a major accident, I think we’ll see just how short-sighted it is to give the only realistic alternate route a “road diet.” But hey, bikes y’all.
  2. Roundabouts. I live downtown, just south of Wealthy Street. To get to my home from Division Avenue, you cross through two roundabouts. The first one, at Jefferson, consolidates two eastbound lanes into one, on the mistaken assumption that drivers on the inside lane intend to head north on Jefferson. Instead, the eighth-mile stretch between Division and Jefferson becomes a game of speed-up-and-cut-off between vehicles on the two eastbound lanes. Inasmuch as the traffic professionals profess that roundabouts make roads safer, the truth for this particular roundabout is that you see riskier driving from people who want to leapfrog slower-moving traffic in the outside lane. I’ve seen more near-collisions at the Wealthy/Jefferson roundabout than any other intersection in Grand Rapids, and last summer I personally forced one aggressive driver into the flower-covered “median” because I refused to let him cut me off. Just yesterday, in fact, I had to wave through a driver who stopped in the roundabout to yield because she didn’t realize that a traffic circle isn’t an intersection. On the bright side, though … the city’s adding even more roundabouts on our downtown thoroughfares, on the apparent theory that if you put in enough of them, drivers will eventually learn how to use them.
  3. The Silver Line. I’m happy to admit that over the years I’ve made heavy use of The Rapid. Personally, I like the local bus system — it’s clean and reasonably efficient and cost-effective on a per-rider level. That said, I am utterly perplexed as to the value proposition of the Silver Line. This “bus rapid transit” system starts in Wyoming, runs along Division Avenue toward downtown, then meanders to the Michigan Street medical mile. Proponents argue that it’ll cut bus commute times — you buy fares at the stop instead of on the bus, and the buses will have signal preference at traffic lights — and that’s cool. But there are two problems with this scenario: First, there’s no obvious benefit to overlapping the Silver Line with Route 1, at least south of Wealthy. Second, the real problem with the buses downtown is that The Rapid has doubled down on a hub-and-spoke model (instead of a grid system) so pretty much everything has to connect through Central Station. Yes, the Silver Line will make it faster for people who live along Division Avenue to get to Michigan Street. But it’d have been much less expensive to simply expand and reroute the DASH bus system downtown.  For that matter, you’d think The Rapid would first plug the holes in its current route map before moving to BRT (can you say, “why the hell isn’t there at least a connector shuttle along Wilson Avenue between Standale Meijer and the Grandville library, so Walker residents and GVSU students don’t have to spend two hours connecting through downtown just to go three miles to the south?”). I suspect a not-insubstantial part of the reason we have the Silver Line — despite having been defeated at the ballot box on its first go-around — is for regional or national cachet. It’s a “look at how sophisticated G.R. is — we’ve got a BRT system!” shtick for city leaders to crow about at national conferences.
  4. Parking as a Weapon.  Rates are going up. Spots are going away, being converted to bike racks that almost never get used. The city and the 61st District Court are doing a shakedown this summer; I recently was notified, for the first time ever, that I have a ticket from 2007 and the city wants its cash, but if I pay now and don’t contest the ticket the city/court will waive late fees. Convenient, that. Moral of the story: The city doesn’t want you to drive downtown. If you do drive downtown, be prepared to pay through the nose to fund the conversion of parking spaces into empty bike racks. [Side note: I’m not being sarcastic about empty bike racks. Bike racks are like bike helmets: A great idea in principle, but rarely used in practice. I frequent a coffee shop that has a generous bike rack just two storefronts down. Patrons elect, instead, to chain their bikes to the tree in front of the coffee shop. So the tree usually has at least one bike chained to it while the rack typically sits empty. Rinse and repeat across the city.]
  5. Hipster Developments. An interesting byproduct of living in the downtown area is a more intimate familiarity with local businesses. Two years ago, there was some minor scandal as local “anarchists” — presumably, bored teenagers with delusions of grandeur — damaged businesses along the Wealthy Street corridor and decried the gentrification of the inner city. To be sure, I appreciate the many different options at my disposal for locally roasted coffee, tasty microbrews, local-sourced vegan dining and such. It’s interesting, too, to see a giant veggie market sprout up amidst the warehouses and homeless shelters near the river. But you know what I don’t see? Supermarkets that don’t require bars on the windows. Even the downtown housing market is off-balance. Lots of buildings are getting rehabbed into varying kinds of residential properties. Some subsidized, others at market. The theme is “early 20s creative professional with a bankroll” mixed with “people with Section 8 benefits.” Allegedly this blend will create a harmonious, diverse community — a veritable United Colors of Benetton. Yet for all the development that’s already taken place, and for all the time I spend downtown, I see no evidence of this hoped-for explosion of multi-culti happiness outside of the places (like Rosa Parks Circle or The BOB) you’d expect to see it. Whether I sit in the window seat at a coffee shop along West Fulton or the front table at the cigar lounge in the Heartside neighborhood or take a walk along Wealthy Street, I see typical urbanism: Pockets of gentrification amidst a sea of neighborhoods that white people avoid after sundown. I also see lots of homeless people and increasingly aggressive panhandlers, with no apparent intervention by city officials to address this very real barrier to inner-city revitalization.
  6. Bridge Shutdowns. Although I live on the southern periphery of downtown, I grew up on the Upper West Side. I frequently return there for shopping, family visits and related errands. Such a journey requires crossing the Grand River. The local crossings are, from south to north: Wilson Avenue (Grandville), Wealthy Street, Fulton Street, Pearl Street, Bridge Street, Sixth Street, Leonard Street, Ann Street and North Park Street. To get to the Upper West Side from the central city, Ann and North Park won’t work; they take you too far northeast. Wilson is the long-way-around; you’d have to take Market Avenue to Indian Mound Drive and go roughly six miles SW to get to the bridge. Realistically, Wealthy/Fulton/Pearl are the best bets, with Bridge/Sixth/Leonard workable but taking you a few miles north. Imagine my dismay, then, when every couple of months we have unexpected, unannounced and un-signed shut-downs of the Wealthy/Fulton/Pearl bridges because of … wait for it … bike rides and marathons. And, of course, downtown is rerouted for the events, too, so good luck making it to Bridge or Leonard without swinging way east to thwart the hordes. Look, I’m as much a fan of bike rides, marathons and whatnot as the next fellow — but the city shouldn’t cut off access to the West Side from downtown without leaving some reasonably accessible means of crossing the river. At the least, every bridge crossing that’s shut down should be accompanied by a sign announcing the first open bridge to the north and to the south, so drivers don’t have to snake through closed streets, gaggles of spectator and other distractions just to make it to the other side of town. And some advance warning would be nice.
  7. Development Meetings. Should anyone have concerns about the city’s new direction, feel free to attend meetings. The last meeting notice I saw was for 2 p.m. on a Thursday. Which means that people who work the day shift, or people with school-aged children, are effectively excluded from participation. You know who’s not excluded by this schedule? Hipsters and community organizers. The mind boggles.

So. Seven gripes. My chief take-away is that after years of fairly conservative leadership under Mayor John Logie and former city manager Kurt Kimball, Grand Rapids is changing. Drip by drip, increasingly progressive policies, subsumed under the New Urbanism and transit-oriented development banners in spirit if not in name, begin to take hold under the leadership of Mayor George Heartwell and city manager Greg Sundstrom. We see drivers getting the shaft with increasing frequency. We see more emphasis on mass-transit infrastructure and alternative energy. We see a relaxation of marijuana laws and a surge in gentrification. We see a county land bank deciding who wins and who loses.
More than anything, we see the real-world effects of municipal leaders using Richard Thaler’s nudge theory to quietly narrow the scope of options available to ordinary people, to encourage an “approved” choice. Bit by bit, project by project, we’re being nudged into living less like Grand Rapidians and more like Portlanders.
But here’s the kicker: Grand Rapids isn’t Portland or Boston or Ann Arbor or any other city on the map. It’s Grand Rapids. It’s a great town, filled with great people. We have our own culture and traditions. What a shame that instead of embracing our history and our culture, we’re left with leaders who’d prefer to transform us to something that we’re not, to slowly penalize free-market choice and automobile traffic while promoting the latest community-development fads.
The real problem with New Urbanist thinking is that by trying to nudge the market through regulatory and infrastructure tweaks, we’re left with a generic cosmopolitanism that might be attractive in the abstract but proves utterly unworkable in the real world. Just look at the current Heartside neighborhood: Yea verily, we’ve rehabbed many buildings and added a mix of commercial properties and loft-style housing. We don’t have reputable supermarkets, though, which is a huge problem. And who wants to walk in Heartside when every 10 feet, you’re accosted by a panhandler? I’m down there often enough to see what life’s like on those streets. It’s not the great deal it’s cracked up to be, propaganda from the DDA notwithstanding. They can build a New Urbanist utopia, but I’m skeptical a critical mass will embrace it strongly enough to make it sustainable over the long haul. Hell, just look what M6 did to Kentwood and Wyoming: Their southern tiers decamped to Gaines Township and Caledonia, leaving economic devastation and cultural impoverishment between 36th and 52nd streets. As soon as The Next Hip Thing arrives, the young creatives so desperately courted for downtown living will flee, and the cycle of urban decay will begin anew.
The cultural norms that made Grand Rapids great are being sidelined in service to a faux-cosmopolitan ideology prevalent among our current batch of technocrats at City Hall. What a shame. I’d go for a drive to clear my thoughts, but who knows if I’ll find an open bridge — assuming I make it through the roundabouts.

Politics & Culture

Thoughts re: SCOTUS Rulings on DOMA/Prop8

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Last week witnessed a rainbow-colored celebration coupled with furrowed brows after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled the Defense of Marriage Act mostly unconstitutional and kicked back California’s Proposition 8 case back because plaintiffs lacked standing.

Initial impressions:

  • Perhaps the most fascinating part of the rulings wasn’t the substantive outcome, but the logic behind each holding and each dissent. The Prop 8 case, in particular, has knocked some progressives a bit off-keel, because the majority holding arguably emasculates the referendum process nationwide. It creates, de novo, a new implied power for state governments to simply decline to enforce referenda they prefer to ignore. Conservatives argue that the strategy in this case is part of a broader rightward movement by Chief Justice Roberts to narrow the outer parameters of legal standing — surely a good thing — but whether this good is worth the collateral damage to other areas of heretofore settled jurisprudence is a whole different question.
  • It’s curious that Kennedy’s DOMA opinion relied as much as it did on the assumption that DOMA was based on anti-gay animus rather than the somewhat safer substantive-due-process grounds. There may well be implication to the majority’s rhetorical approach in Windsor that, in the future, will prove difficult for the high court to apply to other similarly situated cases.
  • I’m not a fan of DOMA — it was never good law, and it made a farce of the very federalism it purported to defend  — but the route of its demise is almost as unpalatable as its continuing existence. We’re now left with a patchwork of problems that surely will result in Full Faith & Credit suits (e.g., if same-sex spouses move to a state where same-sex marriage is illegal). It would have been preferable if DOMA were repealed by Congress instead of being weakly invalidated by SCOTUS; given a few more years, such a repeal may well have been enacted.

We’ve learned a few important things over the last decade. First, that there’s a lot of anti-gay animus still out there. Second, that the LGBT crowd is effective at mobilizing the political and legal systems to redress the animus. Third, that the net result of the public discussion will likely not be helpful in the long run as long as top influencers continue to gerrymander the political process.

I believe that in a perfect world, a person’s sexual identity should not be anyone else’s business, and the law should be blind to sexual orientation — no favoritism, no oppression.

I also believe that the key to progress is positive engagement. Much of the groundwork for recently improved attitudes towards gays and lesbians is, I think, afterglow from the Will & Grace phenomenon. As soon as people had “experience” (even if on TV) with a non-stereotypical, non-threatening gay person, attitudes began to soften, much like the Civil Rights movement absolutely depended on people having non-stereotypical, non-threatening experience with racial diversity during World War II. But instead of playing the long game and helping to soften attitudes over a generation, the leaders of the LGBT movement got impatient — they demanded “marriage equality now” and therefore inspired a backlash. I am convinced that the gay-rights movement will follow a similar trajectory as the abortion debate, because evolving attitudes were shocked into reaction by too-aggressive, too-impatient mobilization by activists. Activist greed has real-world consequences.

Politics & Culture

Why is @WeeklyStandard Leading Conservatives Astray on NSA Monitoring?

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The more you struggle to justify something, the more likely the odds that the subject is inherently unjustifiable. As such, it’s disappointing that the June 24 issue of The Weekly Standard spends so much time trying and failing to reassure conservatives that the recently disclosed monitoring activities of the National Security Agency constitute a “nothing to see here, move along” moment.

Consider:

  • In The Scrapbook, we learn that “[g]iven the choice between impersonal surveillance, and a repetition of 9/11, most Americans understand what’s at stake.” Because, apparently, there are no options between impersonal surveillance and a repetition of 9/11.
  • Bill Kristol’s lead editorial — titled “IRS Bad, NSA Good” — is a veritable piñata of fallacies. He cites “two leading libertarian legal thinkers, no friends to intrusive government” who support the NSA’s activities and who are quoted, without a hint of irony, as suggesting that we “can’t cite a single case” of government abuse of NSA data. Apparently, Kristol hasn’t surveyed the overwhelmingly negative reaction to the program within the pages of Reason (the propaganda arm of the modern libertarian movement) or considered that perhaps the NSA (like the IRS or EPA) doesn’t actually disclose its abuses. After deploying the libertarian red herring, Kristol devotes half a page to an odd paean about conservatives being able to “walk and chew gum at the same time” before concluding with the non sequitur that … well, I’m not sure. The entire second half of the editorial is as perplexingly off-topic as a Krugman column.
  • Stephen F. Hayes, in “Our Disappearing President,” tell us that since Congress authorized NSA monitoring, and the four top Congressional overseers of the intelligence community are peachy-keen with things, that the only real scandal here is that President Obama hasn’t been more forceful in defending the NSA.
  • We then learn from Reuel Marc Gerecht, in “The Costs and Benefits of the NSA,” that the document leaker, Edward Snowden, is “a serious flake” and that “[c]ivil liberties after 12 years of the global war on terrorism are actually as strongly protected in America as they were in 1999.” A proposition that will come as a surprise, no doubt, to anyone who’s ever passed through a TSA screening checkpoint. Then Gerecht tells us that it’s more likely for civil liberties to be violated by “smaller organizations — the FBI, the CIA or the Secret Service” than by the presumably larger NSA. What a relief! And, by the way, someone should tell political scientists that there’s a direct positive correlation between the size and ethical integrity of a given bureaucracy. We are also invited to trust, on Gerecht’s assertion alone, that the NSA “would probably break down bureaucratically if it attempted to shift gears from foreign observation to domestic surveillance in any threatening way.” Because, of course, it’s apparently impossible to replace people from the old regime with members of the new.

So what do we take away from all of this reassurance?

First, TWS resorts surprisingly often to ad hominem attacks against Snowden and we see many more false-binary and straw-man arguments on this subject than I’m accustomed to seeing from this otherwise intellectually solid magazine. This rhetorical approach hints at an ideological meta-narrative: The writers cannot paint a principled conservative argument in favor of a wide intel dragnet, so they rely on insinuation, assertion and misdirection to arrive at a semi-plausible but logically sketchy conclusion that does comparatively little institutional violence to the muscular interventionist worldview the magazine did so much to promote during the George W. Bush administration. Perhaps the editors adjudged it better to defend the NSA, albeit imperfectly, than to acknowledge honestly that civil liberties really can be (and potentially are) a casualty in the Global War on Terror.

Second, the tack followed by TWS tracks the course charted by leaders in Congress and within the intelligence community — that without the kinds of surveillance presently underway by the NSA, America stands at risk for another 9/11.

It’s not so much that Washington leadership asserts, without proof, that surveillance has averted terror attacks. It’s not even the “trust me, there are no abuses here” line that gets tossed about with reckless abandon. Rather, the problem is the paradigm, the Hobson’s choice that our options are either to accept the surveillance or risk death by terrorist.

America may plausibly pick from any combination of anti-terror initiatives on a very long list of options. The policy currently favored in Washington indicates a bunker mentality: We’ll collect everything, everywhere, and sort things out retrospectively. We’ll hide behind a wall of security, like TSA screenings, that serve more as theater than effective deterrent. We’ll do something comparatively bloodless, like electronic surveillance, instead of risking boots on the ground or deploying human assets in global hotspots.

But why can’t we deal with terror networks in a manner that’s less disruptive to civil liberties? Why can’t we aggressively attack terror cells where they are, and hold accountable the states that harbor them? Why can’t we engage in behavior-based profiling, like the Israelis do, instead of watching TSA agents search the colostomy bags of disabled WWII veterans? Why can’t we invest in a more robust eyes-and-ears intelligence network instead of relying disproportionally on signals intelligence? Why must the emanating penumbra of the Constitution guarantee my privacy, but only about sex?

There’s a wide range of effective policy decisions between “surveillance state” and “unattended borders.” Conservatives must evaluate the risk/reward matrix for national counter-terrorism activity as part of a broader policy formulation. Is the risk of a massive loss of privacy sufficient to guarantee, for any individual citizen, a miniscule reduction in the already miniscule odds that he’ll be a victim of a terror attack? We need a national conversation about whether the benefits are worth the cost. The real scandal here is that the public hasn’t been engaged in that conversation — that the key choices have been made in secret, by people with a vested interest in building a surveillance state. That it took Snowden’s leaks to disclose a program that President Obama said shouldn’t have been all that secret, speaks volumes.

Personally, I would rather risk another 9/11 while maintaining my freedom of obscurity, than to surrender that freedom for the illusion of safety. I have no conspiracy-laden fear of the NSA or of surveillance, per se. I do object to the mindless aggregation of data that serve no useful purpose, but which one day, when an abuse does occur, puts my freedom at some small but non-zero risk.

There’s no such thing as true risk avoidance. The best you can do is balance different strategies to arrive at an optimal cost-benefit ratio. America really hasn’t addressed the cost-benefit ratio — not yet, anyway. What a shame that The Weekly Standard seems content to short-circuit the debate with a “nothing to see here” issue that proved short on substance but long on misdirection. The conservative movement deserves better leadership than this.

Philosophy, Politics & Culture, Religion

Wisdom and The Law

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Many moons ago, I half-justified to a friend a particular deviation from Catholic moral theology by arguing that as long as he understood the rationale behind the Church’s prohibition, he could live according to the real moral truth (imperfectly encapsulated by a behavioral norm) despite his superficial non-conformance with the letter of the law. The subtext of that somewhat Gnostic argument? That much of the thou-shalt-not discipline of Scripture and Tradition was intended to provide concrete guidance to the great unwashed masses who lack the intellectual wherewithal to properly adjudicate complex ethical problems.

We, the wise, however, ought not to labor under such crude restrictions, better suited to toddlers than adults. Ergo, as long as we could tease out a logical superstructure of principle beneath those crusty old rubrics, we could live as enlightened souls who didn’t obsess over compliance with rules intended to shepherd the children around us.

Interesting, then, to read Aaron Rothstein’s review of Steven Weitzman’s Solomon: The Lure of Wisdom published in the current issue of The Weekly Standard. Rothstein — a medical student at Wake Forest — offers a refreshing insight into the interplay of wisdom and spiritual humility:

The rabbis conceived of gezeirah, alternatively known as building a fence around the Torah. One places certain restrictions on lifestyle in order to (in Rabban Gamliel’s words) “keep a man far from transgression.” … In other words, if we understand the secrets of why we do certain things or why certain laws exist, we remove the barriers that prevent us from breaking more serious laws. Solomon’s downfall, then, demonstrates the danger of too much understanding — a biblical version of the Faustian tale.

Put differently: Laws, both secular and religious, serve as markers that delimit acceptable behavior. In many cases, those markers sit very far away from grey zones, in order to protect people from the confusion reigning at morality’s twilight. When we, the wise, treat those markers as rules for the unenlightened — when we decide that our own wisdom is sufficient to light our way through that twilight — we risk missing the next set of markers, hidden in the darkness, roping off the point of no return. Ethics becomes tautology: A given act is acceptable because I believe it’s acceptable. QED. And the wisdom inherent in the original placement of those universal markers fades from public consciousness.

Having decided that I have ascertained the real lesson of the rules that govern everyone else, I can then presume to know when those rules may safely be broken. And what’s true of one’s private life — e.g., out-thinking biblical dietary norms — works in one’s public life, too. Anyone want to wager whether all the best and brightest at the National Security Agency will always elect to follow domestic-surveillance laws, enacted in messy and haphazard fashion by a dysfunctional Congress, when the intelligence analysts think they’ve got a compelling case to skirt them in service to their version of the public good?

We break laws with impunity when we think we understand the law’s purpose and decide that some other, higher, purpose ought to trump.

Therein lies the risk. Humility — a trait that often comes easier to men of intellectually modest means — helps us to acknowledge that the law’s markers serve a valuable purpose and were erected with foresight. When we lack that humility, we treat those markers as speed bumps, yet we rarely acknowledge that some wisdom superior to our own may have played a part in setting them.

Solomon fell because he out-thought the Torah and God decided to remind him that mere wisdom isn’t a license to disobedience. Today, we see case after case after case of men out-thinking both statutory and natural law, and we must ask: Are we really that wise, after all?

Politics & Culture

On Libertarians and Ron Paul

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By popular demand (i.e., Abbi), I present a brief synopsis of why some people like Ron Paul.

A few points:

  • The most basic ascription of a libertarian is someone who believes in maximal individual liberty and minimal state intervention. Libertarians are in favor of things like gay marriage and drug decriminalization, on the theory that a consenting adult shouldn’t be prohibited from engaging in an action that doesn’t infringe upon the life, liberty or property of another. State regulation is limited to basic infrastructure — including a predictable property-rights regime — intended to provide individuals a defense against force or fraud by others. Libertarians tend to be non-interventionists in international affairs and favor user fees instead of taxes for public goods. They’re also often more trusting of the free-market system despite occasionally demonstrating cynicism about very large corporations and multinationals.
  • Libertarians often (but not always) align with Republicans on many issues, because many Republicans tend to favor smaller government and lower taxation. However, this association strained during the George W. Bush years; libertarians did not support intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan, nor did they smile upon the “compassionate conservative” agenda that included Medicare Part D and democracy-building across the world.
  • The above notwithstanding, there’s really no such thing as a “typical libertarian” any more than there’s a typical conservative or liberal. Adherents of libertarian thought argue robustly among themselves about various aspects of their ideology, perhaps even more so than denizens of other main ideologies.
  • Some libertarians — again, like some liberals and conservatives — have their hobbyhorses. Ron Paul, for example, doesn’t much care for the Federal Reserve System and America’s current monetary policy. Paul doesn’t much care for “fiat money” — that is, money issued solely on the credit of the issuing government — and favors a return to a gold-backed dollar. The dollar was actually backed by gold until as recently as 1971, when President Nixon unilaterally terminated the convertibility of U.S. dollars into gold.
  • Ron Paul is, by all accounts, a highly intelligent man. He’s also not much of a team player; House leadership could rarely count on him to vote against his principles for the sake of a party goal. Some characterize him as a crank. Others think he’s a modern-day Cato.
  • Many young people who favor conservative economic policy but remain uncomfortable with the quasi-evangelical social policy of today’s GOP aligned with Ron Paul.

Questions? Bueller? Bueller?

Politics & Culture

On the Ethics Relating to Feral Cats

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Last week, I said that I’ve got a family of ferals in my garage. These four felines have prompted quite a bit of discussion among my friends.

First, the Lenin question. What is to be done? Abbi and Brittany advocate TNR — trap, neuter, release. The idea is to crate the cats, take them to a local clinic that does free spaying and neutering for ferals, and then put the fuzzy four-legs back where they came from. The argument is that TNR is the most humane way of addressing burgeoning urban populations of feral cats: You don’t kill them outright, but you do remove their ability to procreate, thus controlling their numbers and limiting their footprint upon the bird and small-mammal populations.

Stacie, by contrast, echoes the official line from PETA, which is to trap and euthanize. Their argument is that there are too many feral cats already, killing birds and otherwise disrupting the local wildlife while simultaneously leading Hobbesian lives of nasty, brutish conditions. Better to painlessly euthanize them as an invasive species and be done with it.

Of all the ethical positions to take, it appears that the least laudable is precisely the one I’ve taken: I am feeding them. I’ve been giving Snowball and her three shorties a cup of dry food per day plus a plastic dish of clean water.

My strategy leads directly to a second point, regarding the line between feral and domestic cats in general. The mama of the bunch — which I’ve cleverly named Snowball because she’s solid white — went from hissing at me if I got within 10 feet, to meowing (happily) when she sees me and letting me pet her when I feed her. She actually comes to me when she sees me in the driveway. All this, within one week. Yes, her behavior is Pavlovian. But it’s interesting, because my two indoor cats pretty much act the same way. Granted that the indoor kitties are litterbox trained and don’t scratch stuff up, the question remains whether they’re really all that different from Snowball.

Dogs domesticate. Cats don’t, really. Snowball could probably never be an indoor cat — I wouldn’t even try. My indoor cats would probably die within a week if they were released into the wild. But habituation and domestication are wholly separate concepts.

More interesting are the kittens. When I first saw them, they were old enough to eat dry food and explore on their own, but not so old that they didn’t occasionally nurse. The kittens remained afraid of me; only one let me touch him when they dared to approach the dry food I left out. And now, I haven’t seen any of them in the last two days.  So do I still feed Snowball, when she doesn’t seem to be managing a litter anymore?

Decisions, decisions. Perhaps the best insight came from Alaric, who noted that presuming to make any interference with the cats — TNR, euthanasia, even feeding — is to presume to intrude upon the natural order of their lives, so right off the bat any choice violates their autonomy as creatures operating in the natural world. Every other ethical choice follows from that first-order violation.

Who would have thought that something as commonplace as a transient family of ferals could prove so ethically complex?

Politics & Culture

Bolting the Door of Social Change

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In the April 29, 2013 issue of The Weekly Standard, Ivan Kenneally writes in “Is Traditional Marriage Toast?” that

… same-sex marriage is a culmination of a long-brewing development, an unspooling of essential modern premises. The relentless logic of modernity is unrestrained individuality, the lonesome sovereignty of the singular person. The pith of matrimony is natural gregariousness, our completion of human beings through coupling. It was only a matter of time before the crashing tide of autonomy reached the shores of conjugal union, pitting the inviolability of the individual against the venerableness of the family. If anything, it is remarkable marriage has remained intact for so long, a testament to its profound allure even in a culture whose trends undermine it.

Kenneally runs through the standard libertarian boilerplate that same-sex marriage is odd, but that the institution itself is not the unchanging bulwark of domestic bliss that it’s often alleged to be.

The SSM angle aside, what struck me about this argument is the implication that conservatives, by and large, have taken perhaps too seriously the drive to stop social change without really thinking about the usefulness of their objections or the seriousness of the battle.

Change is inevitable. True, much change that originates from the Left is not so good; in broad strokes, progressive social change de-emphasizes institutions in favor of radical individual autonomy. Except in economic contexts, of course, in which progressives favor socialization — mostly to pay for the net result of their focus on equality of outcome.

The conservative movement relies on a reflexive No. Often, standing athwart history makes sense. But too frequently, conservatives rely on reflex and never evaluate whether it might make more sense to shape change rather than to block it.

Consider same-sex marriage. Love it or hate it, it appears inevitable. So what’s a conservative to do? Some duck their heads in the sand, some advocate ideological purges, others don’t give a rip. Very few conservatives publicly acknowledge that SSM isn’t the disease, it’s the symptom. Marriage is an increasingly incoherent institution. It serves basic legal purposes, but other institutions could serve those same purposes.

A prudent conservative would look at SSM not as a broadside, but as an opportunity to refine and make more useful an institution that’s been undermined ever since easy contraception and quick divorce made a joke of the “bonds of matrimony.” Maybe that newly reinvigorated institution includes SSM (or polygamy, or whatever) or maybe it doesn’t. But the first step in “saving traditional marriage” comes in acknowledging that SSM isn’t the most lethal enemy on the radar. It’s probably not even in the top 10. Heterosexuals have done more to screw up traditional marriage than homosexuals have, and the culture of indulgence that promotes “the lonesome sovereignty of the singular person” is a much stronger threat to family life than same-sex spouses ever will be.

In other words, the marriage debate opens up a door through which conservatives should gleefully charge, instead of hitting the alarm button and reaching, panicked, for the deadbolt. For as long as conservatives abandon the ideas to the Left, the Left gets to twist the ratchet of change.

Politics & Culture

Zero Political Shades of Gray

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The meta-debate about same-sex marriage and the Supreme Court prompted a side conversation with a friend that highlighted my frustration with people whose opinions on any given subject constitute little more than a rationalization of the inverse argument offered by an ideological opponent.

Conservatives don’t care much for progressives. Progressives don’t care much for conservatives. Yet too many people from each camp content themselves to find an explanation — any explanation, no matter how flimsy — to justify their oppositional defiance to a caricature of the position of the other side.

Put differently: Not only do we lack 50 shades of political gray, we lack any shades of gray. Positions distill to paired binaries; you’re pro or con without any hope of a middle ground or an alternative position. Deviate from the black-and-white model, and you’re either a traitor to the cause or a wacko kook outside the mainstream.

Almost every political question being tossed about in the mainstream press — entitlement reform, gun control, abortion, same-sex marriage, defense spending — distills into a straw man. Policy issues with several distinct facets are ground into a single surface that reflects back a mere bumper-sticker slogan.

Consider just two questions: Same-sex marriage and gun control. On SSM, you’re either for “marriage equality” or for “traditional marriage.” Very little serious attention is paid to the best, ideologically hybrid solutions, like splitting religious and civil marriage or treating marriage like a personal contract like any other. On gun control, you’re either in favor or against tougher laws; not many have bothered to adjust their solution set in light of a copious stream of data that suggests that some regulations are useful and others aren’t.

America’s problems have solutions. Social discord has an exit strategy. But as long as we insist on treating every policy question like a zero-sum game with only one valid answer per ideology, we all lose.

Politics & Culture

Expertise and Its Discontents

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The hardest thing about earning a degree in moral philosophy is discussing ethics with someone who lacks any real academic formation in the subject. Interlocutors assert, based on their belief that they have a personal apprehension of “right and wrong,” that their perspectives are just as valid as the expert’s. After all, everyone’s entitled to an opinion.

Except … when they aren’t. An opinion is nothing more than the conclusion of an argument whose major premises, more often than not, are unexpressed. And an argument’s conclusion is open to criticism based on the usual criteria of logical consistency, factual coherence, etc. You’re not “entitled” to be unchallenged in your idiocy. Privilege only applies to preferences (e.g., “I like cashews”).

So you get into these positions where you’re discussing the ethical propriety of “X” and person “Y” refuses to accept that someone else has a better understanding of the subject than they do. For people unschooled in the academic aspects of moral philosophy, “ethics” is merely “deciding what’s right and wrong,” and since everyone thinks his moral compass is infallible, most people are resistant to counsel that flows from first principles.

There are parallels with other domains of expertise, too. Try being the statistician with a solid understanding of data-management theory, and then explain to the uninitiated why they can’t get the data they want, when they want it, in the format they demand. If you’re the only one in the room who understand the technical implications of a request, and everyone else in the room are customers in the business who only know that they want a result yesterday, then most attempts to impose methodological coherence are viewed as being negative or obstructive: “Just give me what I want.” Even if what they want is mathematical nonsense.

barista-300x225Or, take baristas. Just because you know how to make a pot of coffee doesn’t mean you’re smarter than your barista, and it doesn’t give you the right to treat the coffee-ordering experience as if it were a Cold War treaty negotiation. You really don’t need to counsel the barista about how many pumps of syrup to use or ask irrelevant questions like whether the beans are shade-grown or whether you can substitute fermented yak milk or whether you can bring in your own antique glass cups for your hot tea. You also don’t need to comment on the names of cup sizes. Just drink the damn coffee and leave a tip.

Even physicians aren’t immune; more and more doctors lament that self-diagnosed patients are more difficult to treat and are more prone to abandoning prophylactic treatment because they think they know better.

Expertise, then, is both a blessing and a curse: You really do know better than others, but others fail to concede the point.

So next time you’re arguing with someone whose education and experience outshine your own, remember how you felt when the tables were turned and shape your response accordingly.

Politics & Culture

Behold the Awesome Power of Medieval Ukrainian Chant

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Whilst browsing a discussion forum a few days ago, I came across a thread about members’ favorite music. Much of it was fairly typical — pop music from the last 50 years, mostly, interspersed with some jazz standards, dubstep, folk, etc. — but one person, a quiet sort who grew up behind the Iron Curtain, linked a longish snippet of audio from one of his favorite CDs. The disc included a selection of liturgical chant from medieval Ukraine.

I couldn’t tell whether the singing was in Ukrainian or Old Church Slavonic (my ear’s not that good), but the a capella rendition included what sounded like at least a dozen different melodies playing off of each other. The Orthodox motet contrasted the “noble simplicity” of archetypal Gregorian chant.

This kind of music is hard for the modern listener to appreciate. Most of our popular music is either monophony or homophony; polyphony is just too complex to process without aural training.

I’m reminded of the time, as an organ student, I attended a recital by my professor. The performance was held in late October — the perfect time to play Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D minor (BWV 565). I had, of course, heard that piece many times before, but watching him play, and in particular noting his use of the pedal division, prompted a reassessment that opened my mind to the underlying structure of the music. Listen to it. Try to simultaneously process every “voice” you hear; in the Bach piece, for example, you’re limited to a maximum of four voices (left hand, right hand, left foot, right foot) and usually you get just two or three. Better yet, find a copy of Bach’s Prelude and Fughetta in E minor (BWV 900) and listen to the fughetta. If you can keep track of it without having first enjoyed training in classical music … you might be a prodigy of some sort. (Glenn Gould’s version is, I think, the standard, but the linked YouTube video isn’t bad although the left hand gets sloppy toward the end.)

Modern listeners rarely grasp that the aspects of favored contemporary hits they like the most may well be throwbacks to a richer musical heritage. There’s a reason, after all, that groups or songs people love to hate achieved the success they did. For example, look at the lyrics to Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe. What do you notice? An internal four-line rhyming scheme with roughly equivalent syllable lengths sung in a manner that approximates a simple plainchant. Funny how that works. Had the songwriter opted for the sloppier but trendier open meter, it’s possible the song wouldn’t have caught fire and we might have been spared months of parody videos.

Anyway, for those willing to experiment with more complex music, the rewards are truly rich.