Another random thought on the Santorum thing: Until recently I had the appearances of Pennsylvania's senators reversed. When I started seeing pictures of Santorum, I recognized his face -- except that I thought it was Arlen Specter. It's all very disorienting.
Stentor Danielson, 23:10,
As Kevin Drum has pointed out, you find something new in the Rick Santorum interview every time you look at it. What has occurred to me recently is the contradictory position he seems to have on social engineering.
The essence of Santorum's rejection of the right to privacy is that it prevents the government from regulating something that is harmful to society. Santorum advocates anti-gay measures (as well as condemning adultery, incest, polygamy, etc.) because these deviant practices undermine the traditional family. Because, according to him, the traditional family is the necessary building block of society, the government has a duty to step in to foster and maintain traditional family structures. In essence, he is calling for social engineering.
During the 2000 campaign, Al Gore's budgetary policies were attacked by Republicans as "social engineering." Gore advocated targeted tax cuts and subsidies to encourage certain behaviors, such as using environmentally friendly products and getting an education. Republicans charged that such attempts by the government to manipulate people's behavior were illegitimate. Now, I can't prove that Santorum ever made or even agreed with this line of argument, but it seems likely that he would have, and even more likely that there are Republicans out there that agree with both arguments. This is an obvious contradiction, which reveals that objections to Gore's plan were not really about "social engineering". Social engineering was just a convenient excuse for opposing a policy they didn't like.
This feeds into my general suspicion of any argument against something based on tactics or method of implementation -- that is, criticisms of the means rather than the end. I'm certain plenty of people make honest and consistent means-based arguments. But so often people from all over the political spectrum are vociferous in their denunciation of the other side's tactics, then turn around and use those same tactics in pursuit of their own ends (see, for example, the way Senators' positions on the process for approving federal judges swapped sides when the presidency, and hence the ideology of judicial nominees, changed parties).
So aren't I just as bad as Santorum on this count, given that I support gay rights and favored Gore? Not quite, because my opposition to anti-gay measures is not based on the popular libertarian "don't impose your morals on people" and "government shouldn't interfere in people's private behavior" arguments. What I reject is the crux of Santorum's argument: that gay relationships are harmful to society and that the traditional family is the best way to organize it. Indeed, I think that full legal and social recognition of gay relationships would be a positive good for society, which the government should "engineer" by removing its perverse restrictions on equality for gays (though I have deep pragmatic reservations about the possibility of any government action to directly address social recognition). So my problem is not that anti-gay measures are social engineering, my problem is that anti-gay measures are bad social engineering.
Stentor Danielson, 20:30,
The White House said GOP Sen. Rick Santorum is doing a good job as party leader and is "an inclusive man," despite his controversial remarks on homosexuality.
... "The president believes the senator is an inclusive man. And that's what he believes," [White House spokesman Ari] Fleischer said.
In other news, Bush praised Michael A. Newdow for his deep Christian faith, complimented Jacques Chirac for his willingness to use all possible military force against Iraq, and lauded Karl Marx for his principled defense of capitalism.
Stentor Danielson, 17:04,
"Whoo whoo whoo oogh oogh oogh oogh oogh oogh oogh oogh ooh ooh oooh oooh," Goodall bellowed in the State Department's Dean Acheson Auditorium, drawing laughter and applause from the diplomats and environmentalists gathered to mark Earth Day and to discuss the issue of deforestation.
"That may be the first time that the voice of the chimpanzee has been heard in the State Department," she added.
Insert your own "Bush=Chimp" joke here.
Stentor Danielson, 02:43,
Why must archaeology be so expensive?
Stentor Danielson, 02:36,
24.4.03
I worry that this Rick Santorum issue will backfire on the Democrats. People seem to be seeing this as a parallel to the Trent Lott affair. But there is one big difference: the vast majority of Americans believe racism is wrong. None of the defenses of Lott were defenses of segregation, they were claims that Lott hadn't said that he supported segregation. But the view that Santorum expressed is, shamefully, a very popular one today. Santorum gave a clear statement of the "love the sinner, hate the sin" arguement. This will be an appealing message to a public that for the most part is against bigotry, but is also against homosexuality. And I think that it is certainly possible to differentiate between the inclination or desire to commit an act, and the act itself.
Right now the Democrats have the rhetorical advantage, because they (Howard Dean and John Kerry, at least) have taken the initiative to frame it as radical bigotry versus sensible respect for equal rights. But it's possible for Republicans to spin it as moderate "love the sinner hate the sin" versus a radical gay rights agenda. This slippage is more likely if the debate turns into one about gay marriage, which most Americans see as a pretty far out proposal. It's especially dangerous for Dean, who is already seen as the gay marriage candidate (even though his actual position is that it should be up to the states, so the feds should neither prohibit (a la the Defense of Marriage Act) nor impose gay marriage (or "marriage")).
Stentor Danielson, 16:02,
A judge was kept in the dark about failures in a computer system created to help track royalty payments that were owed to American Indians, a court-appointed investigator reported Monday.
Last September, U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth said Interior Secretary Gale Norton had defrauded the court by making misleading statements about the department's efforts to fix management problems of oil, gas, mining, timber and other royalties from Indian lands. That included covering up failures of the Trust Asset and Accounting Management System.
On Monday, Alan Balaran, a court-appointed special master in the case, said the Interior Department made a concerted effort to sanitize its report on the computer system to make it appear to be working well. He said the department ignored advice from its own experts, who said the report as presented to the court was misleading and inaccurate.
The thing about the trust fund scandal (if you can call it a scandal, since nobody outside the BIA and the tribes seems to care about it) that's hard to comprehend is not how the BIA has screwed over the Native Americans. That's certainly an outrage, but it's also a longstanding American tradition, so it's hardly surprising. What's sometimes more amazing is that the BIA has no qualms about screwing over the court that's trying to resolve the issue. Maybe they're just frustrated that someone's trying to throw out a longstanding American tradition.
Stentor Danielson, 19:43,
22.4.03
Matt Yglesias has a post about the perils of blogging while seeking tenure at a university. He says that blogging can easily be seen by tenure committees as a distraction from real academic writing. So maintaining a blog puts junior faculty at risk, because people can point to their blog as evidence they're not being as productive academically as they could. I think this sort of thing (which I think is a real concern, especially if blogging continues to grow) is a symptom of academia's bias toward academic writing. One of the best sessions I went to at the AAG conference was on writing for the public. It's a subject near and dear to my heart as a blogger and journalist. The participants in the session agreed that writing for the public gets no respect from your academic peers. This is an especially big problem for research paradigms such as feminism that stress the involvement of the people you're researching in the process. Any writing that you do for them -- such as to communicate your results in a language and format they understand -- has to be in addition to your quota of articles and books for academic audiences. But why should, say, a column in the New York Times -- which reaches thousands of people -- count for nothing compared to a report in the Journal of Arid Lands Management, which reaches a few hundred people? In my mind, academia derives its legitimacy from public support. In some fields, like the hard sciences, it's understandable that researchers would engage in conversation mostly among themselves. Quantum physics isn't something most lay people can understand, and so the public is right to allow a sort of elitist technocratic approach to research. But in the social sciences, the reflexivity of the research -- we're researching ourselves -- and the social and political implications of our findings seem to indicate a good case for public communication. Archaeologists working with Native Americans, and environmental hazard managers, have both found that their work is better on its own merits, more accepted by the public, and more effective in helping the world, when they communicate openly with lay people. So why should the academy give less credit to, say, talking to a community group than to an article in Risk Analysis saying that we should talk to community groups?
Stentor Danielson, 13:46,
debitage 
Another random thought on the Santorum thing: Until recently I had the appearances of Pennsylvania's senators reversed. When I started seeing pictures of Santorum, I recognized his face -- except that I thought it was Arlen Specter. It's all very disorienting.