Me looking forward to a new administration:

"No question about it, I am ready to get hurt again!"



(That's from the Office episode called "Chair Model.")

Pete Buttigieg on the problem with “identity politics”

"Buttigieg calls out Democrats for playing 'identity politics'" is the headline at NBC News.

Could this be Pete Buttigieg's Sister Souljah moment?

Here's the video of Mayor Buttigieg's speech to the Human Rights Campaign yesterday. I've cued this up to start just after 19 minutes in:



Here's some of what Buttigieg said. I know most of this doesn't seem unusual for a progressive Democrat. But precisely because he's mainly putting this in progressive terms, the parts where he deviates from the hard-left line have the potential to be that much more inflammatory (notice the boldface):

I'd like to comment on one of the buzz words of our time: so-called identity politics. No one knows quite what to make of it today. . . . It is true that each of us can see in our own identity all of the reasons we're misunderstood and then say, "You don't understand me because you haven't walked in my shoes" — something that is true, but it doesn't get us very far. Because we could also see in our differences the beginning of a new form of American solidarity, by recognizing that the one thing we do have in common may be the challenge of belonging in a society that sees us for what makes us all different. I'm not talking about pretending that there are equivalencies between the different patterns of exclusion in this country. . . .

We have a crisis of belonging in this country. When you do not belong, that doesn't just put you in a bad mood, it puts you in a different country. When black women are dying from maternal complications at triple the rate of white women it means for the purposes of public health they are living in a different country. It means that for a dreamer brought to this land at the age of two months old and putting herself through college without a path to citizenship and the only place she knows then even though she's as American as the rest of, us she finds her life playing out on paper in a different country. . . . When an auto worker 12 years into their career is no longer sure how to provide for their family, they're not part of the country we think of ourselves as all living in together. . . .

And these divisive lines of thinking have even entered into the consciousness of my own party, like when we’re told we have to choose between supporting an auto worker and a trans woman of color, without stopping to think about the fact that sometimes the auto worker is a trans woman of color, and she definitely needs all the security she can get. The wall I worry about the most is not the president’s fantasy wall on the Mexican border that’s not going to get built anyway. What I worry about are the very real walls being put up between us as we get divided and carved up — walls going up within the working class, within communities, even within families. . . .

I am not just like you. No two of us are like! But each of us has a story that can either separate us or connect us to those around us. Yes, I am gay and I am the son of an immigrant and an Army brat. And I'm a husband, and I am a musician, and I'm an Episcopalian, and I'm a Democrat. But above all, I am running as an American. I am here to build bridges and to tear down walls. And with your help, we can tear down those walls between fellow Americans.

When he says "these divisive lines of thinking have even entered into the consciousness of my own party" and talks about the limited usefulness of saying "you haven't walked in my shoes," he's gently but unmistakably pushing back against a strain of thought on the left that former President Obama criticized last year:

Democracy demands [that] we're able . . . to get inside the reality of people who are different than us so we can understand their point of view. Maybe we can change their minds, but maybe they'll change ours. And you can't do this if you just out of hand disregard what your opponent has to say from the start. And you can't do it if you insist that those who aren't like you, because they're white or because they're male, that somehow there's no way that they can understand what I'm feeling — that somehow they lack standing to speak on certain matters.

Walter Olson has a column analyzing what Buttigieg said (the headline writer calls it "Mayor Pete's Sister Souljah Moment," which was published after I used that phrase in this post, but it's a common political term and a point that was just waiting to be made, so I'm not concerned with who said it first):

On one level, his comments critical of identity politics turned out to be pretty mild. Barack Obama has said most of the same things in slightly different words. It’s not as if Andrew Sullivan, Christina Hoff Sommers, or Claire Lehmann were ghostwriting his lines.

And what Buttigieg did say was interspersed with themes and language gratifying to social justice enthusiasts. He endorsed the sweeping Equality Act, which would federalize Main Street public-accommodations disputes while whittling down religious exemptions. He mentioned Stonewall and Harvey Milk. He even acknowledged his own “privilege.” (Though he left ambiguous the extent to which this referred to his white male-ness as distinct from, say, the fortunate path traced by his education and career.)

And yet the South Bend mayor immediately began taking flak for his HRC remarks from some social justice advocates, not a few of whom had already been caustic critics of his candidacy. They could detect from his choice of words that he is not 100 percent on board with their prescribed line—maybe not even 80 percent—and worse still, he is not afraid to say so.

One of his lines drawing fire is on the “my truth, your truth” notion. . . . Or as it might be put more aggressively: “we [members of a marginalized identity] are the only authorities on our experience.”

His response? That’s “true as far as it goes but it doesn’t get us very far.” To you or I, that might read like a platitude. To many on the identitarian left, it comes off as dire wrongthink: after some point that is not “very far” down the road, he intends to steer us all onto some other discourse in which identity is not a trump card. This doesn’t deny our subjective truth as marginalized individuals, exactly, but it does tend to dethrone it as The Truth of all truths.

Another example: Buttigieg’s comments were critical of what he forthrightly calls “white identity politics.” Again, a truism from one perspective, and forcefully stated too. But to some on his left, this will be seen as an attempt at false equivalence. Raising the idea that white and minority identity politics can resemble each other is deeply problematic to the identitarian left. . . .

Again and again in his speech, minor choices of wording that outsiders might not notice served as small—but real—signals of defiance to social justice scorekeepers. I disagree with much that Mayor Pete says here and elsewhere. But I’m glad that he seems to think for himself.

It will be interesting to see whether other Democratic contenders take issue with the mayor’s identity politics remarks. Or if, alternatively, Buttigieg has opened up space toward the center makes it possible for others to follow.

10 years of this blog

10 years ago today, on April 12, 2008, I was having brunch in Austin while writing down a plan in a Moleskine notebook, which I published later that day as my first blog post, on Google's Blogger ("Blogspot").

Over time, the blog evolved into frequent Facebook posts (for reasons I explained here). This blog isn't completely defunct yet, but I mostly like to keep it around as a repository for old content.

I kicked off the blog with a grandiose mission statement: "There's probably a greater excess of content in the world right now than at any previous point in history. We have a glut of content but a dearth of thought. I'll try to correct the balance." 

We easily take for granted how extraordinary our current time is; when I was growing up, if you wanted to express your opinion about something in the news, your main option was to talk to whoever happened to be physically near you. Of course there were other options, like writing a letter to the editor of a newspaper/magazine, or calling in to C-Span, but you'd be at the mercy of corporations' tastes and whims to an extent that makes any concerns about suppression of viewpoints by sites like Facebook seem petty by comparison. Now we have the power to convey our thoughts and feelings to anyone in the world, at any time. We should make the most of that opportunity.

And now, here are some of my favorite posts from 10 years of this blog, in roughly reverse-chronological order (most recent to oldest). I'm sure many of the links and videos within these posts have gone dead by now, but I hope the posts have otherwise held up:

Tori Amos's Little Earthquakes turns 25

Live-blogging presidential debates: 2016, 2012, 2008

Beatles albums — "It was 50 years ago today . . ."

What are we doing when we teach fiction to kids?

Revering the irreverent

Sam Cooke died 50 years ago.

The jazz guitarist Jim Hall has died at age 83.

If people are bad at deciding what's best for themselves, is government the solution?

The "acting alone" fallacy

Thoughts on playing sad songs and easy guitar parts

2 surprising pay gaps

How much of a problem is it that you don't have enough time in your whole life to become "reasonably well-read"?

The top 10 greatest classical composers of all time

Andrew Sullivan, The Crusader

Getting it wrong: language and more

The 12 books that influenced me the most (follow-up)

6 ways blogs are better than books

The 100 best songs of the first decade of the 2000s

Penelope Trunk's Twitter post about miscarriage and abortion

Is "loser" a male noun?

Kant's categorical imperative vs. the golden rule

The 2 most overused chord progressions in pop music

"What are the simple concepts that have most helped you understand the world?"

The problem of evil (continued)

Two kinds of careers

The 40 greatest grunge songs

"Do you see what's happening?"

Thank you, Tim Russert (1950 - 2008)


* * *


So now it's been exactly 10 years that I've been blogging regularly, on this blog or Facebook. Whether I'll do this consistently for another 10 years, I don't know. But I know that my guiding principles will still matter: that facts and reason are more important than ideological commitments or partisan allegiances, and that music is as important as anything.

Thanks for reading, listening, commenting, and thinking!

(Photo by me.)

Democrats and elections

Democrats during the 2008 general election: "Who cares about having a long record of experience? What really matters in a president is the ability to give soaring, inspiring speeches. And if you disagree then you're racist."

Democrats during the 2016 general election: "Who cares about soaring, inspiring speeches? What really matters is for the president to have a long record of experience. And if you disagree then you're sexist."

Celebrity shocks nation by winning presidency

A celebrity who's a "household name" in Guatemala and used to have a TV show, but has never held office, and was initially considered a long-shot contender who didn't offer enough policy specifics to back up his conservative platform, went on to shock many people by winning the presidential election as a result of "widespread discontent with Guatemala's political class." Fortunately, that could never happen here . . .

Guess the source of this quote!

Guess before clicking this link for the answer (and please don't give it away in the comments):

We cannot tolerate illegal immigration and we must stop it. For years . . . , Washington talked tough but failed to act. . . . [O]ur borders might as well not have existed. . . . Drugs flowed freely. Illegal immigration was rampant. Criminal immigrants, deported after committing crimes in America, returned the very next day to commit crimes again.

Peter Koechley of Upworthy on comedy, politics, and "making the world a better place"

Peter Koechley​ talks about going from a high-school satirical newspaper in Madison, Wisconsin (in which I also played a part), to the Onion, to Upworthy. You Won't Believe What Happens Next.

A thought-provoking line: "I actually think most people are pretty good and pretty sensible — and that the higher you get up in a political hierarchy, the less sense you are encouraged to have." (43:20)

Those who cannot remember our past measles epidemic will make other people's children repeat it.

Margaret Talbot writes in the New Yorker:

Twenty-five years ago, when a doctor named Robert Ross was the deputy health commissioner of Philadelphia, a measles epidemic swept the country. Until this year’s outbreak, which started at Disneyland and has so far sickened more than a hundred people, the 1989-91 epidemic was the most alarming that the United States had seen since 1963, when the measles vaccine was introduced. Nationwide, there were more than fifty-five thousand cases and eleven thousand hospitalizations; a hundred and twenty-three people died. Most of those infected were unimmunized babies and toddlers, predominantly poor and minority kids living in cities. Ross thought that the blame for the outbreak could be placed partly on poverty and partly on crack cocaine, which was “making a lot of families forget how to raise children.”

One cluster of kids was getting sick, though, not because their parents lacked the wherewithal to have them immunized but because the parents, members of the Faith Tabernacle congregation, did not believe in immunization. When children in the congregation started dying—ultimately, five did—Ross and his colleagues began going door to door, telling parents that kids whose lives were in danger could be hospitalized by court order. In one house, Ross found an ashen-faced girl of eight or nine who could barely breathe. He got her to the hospital and, when he saw her the next day in the I.C.U., had no doubt that taking her from her home had saved her life. The memory of those who weren’t saved still troubles Ross: “These were kids who had no business being lowered into the ground. And I’ve never gotten over it.”

The epidemic spurred the creation, in 1993, of a federal program, Vaccines for Children, which subsidized shots for children who were uninsured or on Medicaid. Immunization rates soared. Then a new skepticism about vaccination settled in—this time, more often than not, among affluent parents who were drawn to holistic living and were dubious about medical authority. An infamous 1998 study in The Lancet, which claimed that the rising incidence of autism was linked to vaccinations, was particularly influential with some of those parents—even though the data were found to be falsified and the author’s medical license was revoked. Another theory, tying autism to thimerosal, a preservative added to vaccines, has also been debunked. Since 2001, thimerosal has been used only in the flu vaccine—and there is a thimerosal-free alternative—but the incidence of autism continues to rise.

Nevertheless, the skepticism endured, and one result has been the decisive return of infectious diseases. First, it was whooping cough: in 2012, more than forty-eight thousand cases and twenty deaths were reported to the Centers for Disease Control, the greatest number since 1955. Now it’s measles. Both illnesses pose an especially serious threat to babies (infants under a year old cannot be vaccinated) and to people who cannot be vaccinated for medical reasons—if their immune systems are weakened by cancer drugs, for instance—and the complications are costly to treat. As many as one in every twenty children with measles will develop pneumonia; one in every thousand will develop encephalitis, which can leave a child deaf or brain-damaged. In addition, measles is airborne and extremely contagious; virus transmitted by a sneeze on the Dumbo ride or in the doctor’s-office waiting room can still infect people an hour later. That is why, in the case of measles, a community generally needs more than ninety per cent of its members to be immunized against the virus in order to protect those who can’t be. “Herd immunity” doesn’t work unless most of the herd is vaccinated.

What does work is legislation. The highest vaccination rate in the country is in Mississippi, a state with an otherwise dismal set of health statistics. It allows people to opt out of vaccines only for medical reasons—not for religious or personal ones. States that make it easier not to vaccinate have higher rates of infectious diseases. California, which has seen ninety-nine cases in this epidemic, is one of nineteen states that allow people to opt out not only for religious and medical reasons but also on the basis of a loosely defined “personal belief.” In 2012, though, the state legislature passed a law requiring parents to consult with a health-care professional about vaccination before they reject it, and the opt-out rates declined slightly for the first time in years. (Washington passed a similar law and has experienced a bigger decline.) Last week, legislators in California introduced a bill to eliminate the personal-belief exemption—but that may actually be too abrupt and punitive a solution. According to some epidemiologists who study the anti-vaccine movement, it’s probably more effective to continue to enforce a regime that makes it more difficult but not impossible for parents to opt out.

What does not help at all is to treat vaccines and the diseases they prevent as partisan political matters. In 1993, when the Clinton Administration championed Vaccines for Children, it drew bipartisan support; it would have seemed bizarre to cast a measure aimed at preventing epidemics of childhood disease in ideological terms. In fact, until recently, vaccine refusal wasn’t a partisan issue—some objections came from anti-government types but many were from self-identified progressives. In the current discussion, however, conservatives have been embracing a precious individual right to shun inoculation. On Fox News, Sean Hannity declared that he wasn’t “trusting President Obama to tell me whether to vaccinate my kids.” Asked about immunization on CNN last week, Senator Rand Paul, a potential Republican candidate for President—and a doctor—painted a pointlessly terrifying scenario: “I’ve heard of many tragic cases of walking, talking, normal children who wound up with profound mental disorders after vaccines.” No doubt, he has heard such stories, but the evidence does not support them. . . .

Robert Ross believes that “doubling down on education” about infectious diseases will help the situation, but he wonders if that’s enough to “reacquaint some parents”—not to mention some elected officials—“with the dangers of these diseases.” Ross had to rely on the law and the courts to help him save children’s lives in Philadelphia. By then, the situation was dire. He worries that more children will die unnecessary deaths before reason again takes hold.

"Why Democrats Can’t Win Over White Working-Class Voters"

This is a pretty good Slate article, though I could have done without the accusations that people who prefer Bill Clinton's welfare reform to the previously open-ended welfare are "racist."

Also, this part of the article doesn't make sense:

in the 2012 presidential election, Republican nominee Mitt Romney ran a series of ads—concentrated in the white working-class areas of Ohio and Pennsylvania—attacking President Obama for “gutting welfare” and “cutting checks” to people who wouldn’t work.

According to that link, Romney ran ads attacking Obama for "gutting welfare reform" — not "gutting welfare," but expanding welfare.

A conversation about politics

This is me and Alex Knepper talking about politics a few weeks ago on IM. It should go without saying that I would never post something like this without the other person's permission! I've added links and rearranged the text into a coherent dialogue.

A: You voted for Kerry in 2004, right?

J: Yes

A: Did you think that was a particularly dirty campaign?

J: Well, I ignored the swift boat stuff.

A: Interesting. The right-wing base was obsessed with it.

J: That just didn't interest me. I voted for him because I was inclined to vote Democratic, he seemed solid and reasonable, and Bush wasn't very good. I wasn't going to be influenced by personal attacks.

A: Do you think, though, I mean, that the election was a particularly poor display of democratic campaigns at work?

J: Well, my view of a presidential race is mainly based on the debates, plus random TV interviews and speeches and stuff like that, not the ads. I thought the 2004 debates were incredibly serious and substantive, almost to a fault.

A: Who was the last Republican candidate you voted for before Romney?

J: I didn't vote for Romney.

A: Oh yeah. You voted for Gary Johnson. But you preferred Romney to Obama, no?

J: I couldn't decide. For a while, I considered voting for Romney. I wrote up a whole blog post about why I would vote for him, but I didn’t publish it. I can't bring myself to vote for someone who's against legal abortion, against gay rights, etc.

A: I really was stunned that he continued to advocate for the FMA. If he runs in 2016 will he still support the FMA? Geez

J: I voted for Joe Lhota for Mayor. That's the most significant Republican I've voted for. Lhota is pro gay rights, and abortion rights don't matter for NYC mayor. Note: when social issues are off the table, I suddenly start voting Republican — an example of how Republicans lose young voters through their unreasonable social views.

A: I’m at the point now where as long as the Democrat is basically reasonable on economics and foreign policy, even if I disagree a bit (to the right), I'd prefer to vote for the Democrat over a socially conservative Republican. These social issues are clearly being resolved in favor of the liberal position, as is usually the case in American history, and it's time to let these issues go. The longer the GOP holds onto them the more of a drag it is on their ability to do anything substantive.

J: Another reason I wouldn't say I thought Romney was definitely better: I found him appealing because he seemed really smart on economics, more so than Obama. But then I had to step back and say: OK, he can talk about economics smartly, but what is he going to do? And I thought: well, he wants to take money away from Medicaid and spend it on the military. And I just think that's wrong.

A: I was deeply disappointed when he sort of shelved Ryan's Medicare plan, and shamelessly started criticizing the Medicare cuts in Obamacare. The GOP freakin' ran ads in 2010 that juxtaposed the words 'government takeover of healthcare' with 'Obama getting in your Medicare.’

J: Romney was obviously in a bind on health care. What a weird choice for a nominee! I can't believe the Republicans nominated the governor responsible for the precursor to Obamacare.

A: Yeah, well, what was the alternative? Newt Gingrich? Rick Santorum? Herman Cain? All the serious candidates declined to run.

J: Yeah, there was no good candidate. But why was there no good candidate?

A: Because Romney blocked them from entering.

J: Oh, Romney didn't stop anyone from doing anything!

A: Ever since 2008, when I first started writing, I've been mystified by Romney's appeal.

J: I find him appealing! I think he's gotten a bad rap. There's plenty of stuff I disagree with him about. But considering that the Republican party exists, I like him about as much as any Republican. I hope he runs again. And I think he probably will. When I watched Romney, I thought: that's probably what I'd be like if I ran for president. I'd be stilted and awkward and overly calculating. Probably most people I know would be. Most normal people would be uncomfortable as national politicians. Very few people would be as cool and effortless as Obama.

A: Given how lukewarm my opinion about Romney is, it is sad to say that I'd still prefer him to just about anyone else the Republican Party is putting up. I just don't trust him.

J: We should never trust any politician.

"Bouncing ball politics"

What's bouncing ball politics? Thomas Sowell explains this brilliant metaphor:

If you are driving along and suddenly see a big red rubber ball come bouncing out into the street, you might want to put your foot on the brake pedal, because a small child may well come running out into the street after it.

We all understand that an inexperienced young child who has his mind fixed on one thing may ignore other things that are too dangerous to be ignored. Unfortunately, too much of what is said and done in politics is based on the same tunnel vision pursuit of some "good thing," in utter disregard of the repercussions.

For years, home ownership was a big "good thing" among both liberal Democrats like Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd, on the one hand, and moderate Republicans like President George W. Bush on the other hand.

Raising the rate of home ownership was the big red bouncing ball that they pursued out into the street, in utter disregard of the dangers.

A political myth has been created that no one warned of those dangers. But among the many who did warn were yours truly in 2005, Fortune and Barron's magazines in 2004 and Britain's The Economist magazine in 2003. Warnings specifically about the dangerous roles of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were made by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan in 2005 and by Secretary of the Treasury John W. Snow in 2003.

Many, if not most, of the children who go running out into the street in pursuit of their bouncing ball may have been warned against this by their parents. But neither small children nor politicians always heed warnings.

Politicians are of course more articulate than small children, so the pols are able to not only disregard warnings but ridicule them. That was what was done by Congressman Barney Frank and Senator Christopher Dodd, among many other politicians who made the pursuit of higher home ownership rates the holy grail.

In pursuit of those higher home ownership rates, especially among low-income people and minorities, the many vast powers of the federal government -- from the Federal Reserve to bank regulatory agencies and even the Department of Justice, which issued threats of anti-discrimination lawsuits -- were used to force banks and other lenders to lower their standards for making mortgage loans.

Lower lending standards of course meant higher risks of default. But these risks -- and the chain reactions throughout the whole financial system -- were like the traffic ignored by a small child dashing out into the street in pursuit of their bouncing ball. The whole economy got hit when the housing boom became a housing bust, and we are still trying to recover, years later.

The forgotten lesson from the Clinton impeachment and the 1998 midterms

Ramesh Ponnuru explains why the trifecta of ongoing news stories that are widely seen as harmful to President Obama (Benghazi, IRS, and Associated Press) might not help Republicans in the midterm elections:

The biggest danger for Republicans in giving themselves over to scandal mania is one that the conventional retelling of the Clinton impeachment neglects. Republicans didn’t lose seats simply because they overreached on Clinton’s perjury. It is true that his impeachment was unpopular, and public approval of the Republicans sank as they pursued it. Still, only 5 percent of voters in the 1998 election told exit pollsters that the scandal had played a role in their decision, and Republicans got a majority of those voters.

Social Security was the top issue for more than twice as many voters, and Republicans lost that issue by 18 percentage points. Even more voters cared about education, which Republicans lost by 34 points. They lost on health care and the economy by similar margins.

For the most part, Republicans didn’t campaign on impeachment in 1998: They didn’t say, “Vote for me and I’ll do my level best to oust Clinton.” Their strategy was more passive. They were counting on the scandal to motivate conservatives to vote while demoralizing liberals. So they didn’t try to devise a popular agenda, or to make their existing positions less unpopular. That’s what cost them -- that, and the mistake of counting on statistics about sixth-year elections, which also bred complacency.

Republicans have similar vulnerabilities on the issues now. They have no real health-care agenda. Voters don’t trust them to look out for middle-class economic interests. Republicans are confused and divided about how to solve the party’s problems. What they can do is unite in opposition to the Obama administration’s scandals and mistakes. So that’s what they’re doing. They’re trying to win news cycles when they need votes.

Congressional Republicans were right to press for hearings on all of these issues. But investigations of the administration won’t supply them with ideas. They won’t make the public trust Republicans. They won’t save them from themselves.

How can Republicans win after 2012?

Self-proclaimed "liberal Democrat" Bill Scher has some advice for Republicans on how to win in the future. (And yes, it's genuinely good advice, not sarcastic or insincere!)

Condoleezza Rice says:

When you look at the composition of the electorate, clearly we are losing important segments of that electorate. And what we have to do is to appeal to those people not as identity groups, but understanding that if you get the identity issues out of the way, then you can appeal to Americans on the broader issues that all Americans share concerns for.

Alex Knepper (a libertarian Republican) agrees and elaborates:

That’s exactly right. The social issues serve as a barrier to persuasion. New voters — young people, immigrants — tend to identify with one of the parties on a ‘big picture’ basis — not by going down a checklist of issues and comparing the party platforms. The social issues are not only the easiest for the uninitiated to understand, but they have the most emotional impact. It’s one thing to argue over the merits of adjusting the capital gains tax rate — most people will submit that it’s an issue about which reasonable people can civilly disagree. But when Hispanics hear that the Republican presidential nominee has openly advocated making life so miserable for illegal immigrants that they won’t even want to live here anymore (that’s what “self-deportation” means, people), then an enormous wall has been created. When you’ve lost the trust of a minority group, they won’t listen to a word you have to say about Medicare, tax reform, or deficit-reduction. There’s nothing inherent about brown skin that makes a person hostile toward capitalism. But if people with brown skin think that the party of the free market hates them, then they’ll run into the arms of the party of statism. And why not? People need to feel assured that you view them with dignity and respect, not with contempt and loathing. There’s nothing that should be surprising about that.

We don’t need to win the Hispanic vote — we just need to increase our share back to levels more like George W. Bush’s. Changing our policies and tone toward immigration issues is only a first step to achieving that — not only because it is practical, but because it is the right thing to do. Once that issue is out of the way, then we can go about the vital task of reaching out to Hispanic voters on the basis of the timeless American values of upward mobility, economic freedom, and individual liberty.

I think a lot of people go along with Democratic economic policies largely because they've already decided to be Democrats based on social issues. As Knepper points out, social issues are relatively easy to have clear, unwavering views about. Given the choice between memorizing and repeating a few slogans to sum up the mainstream Democratic positions on economic issues, or reaching your own conclusions on those issues by soberly weighing the smartest arguments on all sides, many people just don't have time for the latter, no matter how much more intellectually honest it would be.

Yet people would rather feel a sense of clarity than uncertainty on the major issues of the day. So, when they don't have time to master those issues, they develop shortcuts, like saying their side cares, and the other side doesn't care — or, only cares about the wrong people. That approach is simplistic but powerful enough to be able to explain almost any political divide. Given that Republicans are the party of social and economic conservatism, and that their social conservatism is blatantly uncaring, socially liberal voters have a readily available shortcut for taking a stand on Republican economic policies: just as Republicans' social policies show that they don't care about women, blacks, gays, immigrants, etc., their economic policies show that they don't care about the middle class (or the poor), and that they only care about the rich (or corporations).

It's not just that many voters are socially liberal and prioritize social issues, causing Republicans to lose a portion of the electorate every Election Day based on those issues. Of course, that's true, but Republicans have a broader problem: their positions on social issues are turning off many voters from the very idea of agreeing with them on any issue. Conservatives like to bring up "the law of unintended consequences." Well, how many professional Republicans are willing to face the fact that their party's retrograde positions on social issues have been inadvertently holding economic conservatism hostage?

Why politicians lie

This explains so much about politics and government (written by an Australian economics professor, but applicable in the US to Democrats and Republicans alike):

We demand of our politicians that they share the same beliefs as we do, even if they are ridiculous beliefs, and that they explain everything as favourably for our self-esteem as possible, including our undoubted victory in the next war and the end to poverty within our lifetime. The impossible promises given out regarding war and poverty are repeated for almost anything. For instance, we all want good schools, but we don’t want to pay for them or accept that to really improve the education of the majority means letting go of other ideals, such as the ‘no kid behind’ doctrine that in reality translates into an extremely low base level of learning. We want our cakes and eat it, so we fully expect to see many new initiatives that promise improvement but not much change in reality. Similarly, anything that we as a group have agreed is objectionable or desirable is something we expect our politicians to promise to remove or provide. Politicians are thereby mandated to promise us to remove poverty and climate change, whilst they will deliver economic growth and justice. . . .

Whether or not politicians are actually able to generate 100,000 jobs or not is also irrelevant. What matters is whether the majority of the population believes such job-creation is possible. Hence the limits to lies are given by the education and intelligence of the population. The population knows full well that politicians cannot overnight make their husbands and wives more attractive and caring, and would thus quickly brand any politician promising such things a liar. . . . So the politicians must be honest about their inability to improve husbands and lie about the effect of their policies on climate change. . . .

If you are good at reading the hidden desires and proclivities of your population, you win elections and thus ensure you and your party thousands of cushy jobs and all the associated trappings of power. The competitive nature of politics furthermore ensures a continuous search for storylines that gather political support. Those storylines are sought from the wide world of truth and fantasy alike: whatever is believed and is popular goes – the truth in one instance, a complete fabrication in another. The political process is thereby a search for popular truths and lies and will deliver both in ample measure.

The comments about education remind me of this passage by the British philosopher A.C. Grayling in Meditations for the Humanist: Ethics for a Secular Age (162):

Although there are few if any true democracies in the world — most dispensations claiming that name are elective oligarchies — the democratic spirit nevertheless invests Western life, for good and ill both. The good resides in the pressure to treat everyone fairly, the ill resides in the pressure to treat everyone alike. This latter is a levelling tendency, a downward thrust, which dislikes excellence because it raises mountains where the negative-democratic spirit wishes to see only plains. But democracy should not aim to reduce people and their achievements to a common denomniator; it should aim to raise them, ambitiously and dramatically, as close as possible to an ideal. And that means, among other things, having institutions, especially of learning, which are the best and most demanding of their kind.

Abortion and rape

A piece in Reason magazine points out:

[A]lthough Romney was "always personally opposed to abortion," he was "effectively pro-choice" when he ran for governor of Massachusetts, promising he would not seek to restrict abortion rights. Later he had a "change of heart," but even today he believes, consistent with his Mormon faith, that "abortion should be permitted in cases of rape, incest, or when the mother’s life is threatened."

While that last exception can be justified on grounds of self-defense (albeit against a nonculpable "aggressor"), the other two cannot, and Romney has never clarified why rape or incest justifies taking an innocent life. Likewise the Mormon church, which cites the biblical injunction against murder in condemning abortion but nevertheless does not take as hard a line as the Roman Catholic Church.

"For many people," Romney said in a 2007 presidential debate, abortion "is considered an act of murder." Evidently he is not one of those people.

I agree that it doesn't seem to make sense for those who are opposed to abortion rights to support a rape exception. If abortion is infanticide, why does that fact no longer matter when there has been a rape? After all, no one supports infanticide of a baby (who has been born) when the conception resulted from rape!

The apparent discrepancy would seem to be resolved if you assume that what really motivates pro-lifers is disapproval of promiscuity and hedonism.

I question whether anyone is genuinely, whole-heartedly in favor of criminalizing abortion in the sense that they would like to see vigorous prosecutions of anyone who performs or receives an abortion, or aids someone else in doing so (e.g., paying for someone else to get an abortion). The consequences would be wildly unacceptable.

Stating one's opposition to a legal right to abortion can be a way of saying there's something about modern culture that one finds objectionable; it isn't a realistic policy solution. The fact that abortion remains generally legal actually works to the opponents' political benefit. As Nietzsche said (in Human, All Too Human, #531), "Whoever lives for the sake of combating an enemy has an interest in the enemy's staying alive."

Who's winning the political center?

Republicans, argues William Galston — a worried Democrat.

The Political Compass ideology quiz

You can take the quiz here to find out where they place you on economic and social issues.

Based on my scores, I seem to be a moderate libertarian.

Libertarianism is often seen as an extreme ideology, so is "moderate libertarian" an oxymoron? Not according to Tyler Cowen. Writing in 2007, he said that libertarian policies have increased America's economic growth, but added:

The more wealth we have, the more government we can afford. Furthermore, the better government operates, the more government people will demand. That is the fundamental paradox of libertarianism. Many initial victories bring later defeats.

I am not so worried about this paradox of libertarianism. Overall libertarians should embrace these developments. We should embrace a world with growing wealth, growing positive liberty, and yes, growing government. We don’t have to favor the growth in government per se, but we do need to recognize that sometimes it is a package deal.

In short, libertarianism has the seeds of its own destruction.

As with all these kinds of quizzes, I take issue with the premise of some of the questions. The first one is whether you agree with this statement:

If economic globalisation is inevitable, it should primarily serve humanity rather than the interests of trans-national corporations.

This seems designed to prompt you to think in zero-sum terms about benefitting either "trans-national corporations" or "humanity." I wish there had been an option that would have allowed me to take the position that globalization should benefit both trans-national corporations and humanity at the same time. But the quiz nudges you toward answering that "humanity" should take precedence over "corporations." (The quiz writers should read the section in chapter 1 of Thomas Sowell's Economic Facts and Fallacies about the "zero-sum fallacy" and the chapter on free trade in Tim Harford's The Undercover Economist.)

Also, the quiz results are supposedly about your political views, but several of the social questions don't refer to any role of government. For instance, you could believe that discipline is the most important value to instill in children, and that society has gone too far in allowing people to express sexuality in public (which the quiz would count as "authoritarian" positions), while taking a libertarian position that government should stay out of these issues. You can have a moral objection to the painted nude woman in Times Square the other day without thinking the police should have arrested her. The quiz is supposed to test whether you do have authoritarian political views, but the quiz seems to make an authoritarian assumption that you'll want the government to enforce your morals.

Live-blogging Rick Perry's first 2012 Republican presidential debate

My mom, Ann Althouse, is live-blogging too. So is TalkingPointsMemo, in 4 parts: 1, 2, 3, 4.

[Added later: Here's the complete transcript of the debate, on the New York Times' website. But I don't know how accurate that transcript is; it refers to Brian Williams as being with Politico, when he's the anchor of NBC Nightly News. Here's the full video:]



Feel free to post any reactions to the debate in the comments.

8:03 - Rick Perry says Brian Williams is wrong to say most jobs that have been created in Texas are "low-wage jobs," because 95% of them were above the minimum wage. Spot the fallacy!

8:06 - Mitt Romney touts his "experience succeeding [and] failing." I'm sure some people would like to use his positive spin on "failing" against him, but it makes sense.

8:07 - Perry reveals his strategy against Romney: concede that he did well in the private sector, and contrast this with his work as governor.

8:08 - Perry has a zinger against Romney: Michael Dukakis created jobs three times as fast as Romney did in Massachusetts. Without missing a beat, Romney retorts that Perry created jobs more slowly than George Bush did (presumably this refers to Bush as Governor of Texas, not President). Brian Williams: "Nice to see that everyone came prepared."

[Added later: here's a video of the most attention-getting squabble between Romney and Perry.]



8:11 - Herman Cain has a "9/9/9" plan for the economy. Maybe he was listening to the Beatles' "Revolution 9."

8:15 - In response to a jobs question, Michele Bachmann puts the emphasis on kids and racial minorities.

8:16 - Ron Paul "doesn't believe in" any federal safety regulations. He believes only in the "regulations" of the free market.

[Added: I was writing down these quotes on the fly based on trying to pay attention to the debate while making soup for dinner. I believe my quotes are reasonably accurate, but they might not be verbatim.]

8:21 - When asked about his health-care reform in Massachusetts (as he always is in these debates), Romney not only gives his usual vow to give waivers from Obamacare to all states on day 1 and eventually repeal it. He also defends his decision in Massachusetts based on the fact that the status quo ante was unacceptable because people were incentivized to rely on emergency rooms for all health care, the costs of which were passed on to the people.

8:27 - Newt Gingrich continues his tactic from the last debate of attacking the moderators: "I'm not interested in your attempt to get Republicans fighting each other. . . . Let's not puff this up into some giant thing."

8:31 - I agree with Rick Santorum about welfare reform.

8:33 - Perry paraphrases John F. Kennedy, who "said that the most powerful welfare program is a job." I believe this is the first time in the last three debates that a candidate has referenced a Democrat in a positive way.

8:35 - Romney on President Obama: "He keeps talking about green jobs. Where are they?" Good question.

8:37 - Ron Paul calls out the moderators for only asking Romney about his health-care plan and not asking Perry about supporting Hillary Clinton's health-care plan. (Perry denies this.)

8:39 - Perry takes a gratuitous swipe at Ron Paul for quibbling with then-President Reagan. This is a transparent gambit on Perry's part to give more time to Paul and take time away from the stronger candidates.

8:49 - Perry says anyone who promotes Social Security as we know it is perpetrating "a monstrous lie" to young people. He does not exclude Karl Rove or Dick Cheney from this.

8:51 - Romney clearly places himself as the moderate candidate — who wants to save Social Security — against Perry, the extreme candidate — who wants to abolish Social Security. He seems to have read this article in The New Republic:

You must persuade the decisive portion of your party that Rick Perry is too extreme to be elected president.

Here’s your theme: Rick Perry wants to repeal the 20th century. I don’t. And neither do the American people.

[I've added this video, and commentary from TalkingPointsMemo:]

The exchange marks a crucial moment in the campaign: this is the first time Romney has deliberately staked out a centrist position in order to attack Perry explicitly from the left. This is a dynamic that’s going to have a huge impact on the character of the race from this point on, assuming Romney holds his ground.

8:58 - Romney is notably gracious in not going along with Paul and Bachmann in attacking Perry over his widely reviled HPV vaccination law.

9:01 - Paul says the attacks of September 11, 2001 happened because Americans didn't have enough guns.

9:04 - Jon Huntsman says the Department of Homeland Security has "a fortress security mentality that is not American."

9:08 - Gingrich praises Obama for showing "some courage" on education policy. I believe that's the first time any candidate has praised anything about Obama.

9:13 - Santorum makes a good argument on immigration, which I've never heard before: "It's a very good thing for the first thing you do when you come to this country to be a legal act, not an illegal act."

9:20 - A commenter on my mom's blog says:

Perry is a disappointment - not ready for prime time. His simplistic sloganeering makes Sarah Palin sound like Thomas Jefferson.

9:23 - Romney dodges the question whether he's a member of the Tea Party: "I don't think you carry cards in the Tea Party." (This sounded a little odd, since the moderator didn't use the phrase "card-carrying member.") He qualifies his answer that "I'm for the Tea Party" by saying this is true "if the Tea Party is for" smaller government and so on. In other words, he agrees with them as long as they agree with his opinions. That's a weak answer. Why not say unequivocally that he supports the Tea Party because they are for those things?

9:25 - A Facebook friend, Alex Knepper (who gave me permission to identify him and link to his Facebook), says:

REAGAN is not a synonym for GOOD, people!

9:29 - Perry blatantly dodges the question whether Bush was too quick to go to war without thinking through the risks. He blithely says he's against "adventurism" but doesn't clarify how he would apply this to any of Bush's foreign-policy decisions.

9:29 - Perry, of his own accord (not in response to any question), gives emphatic praise to Obama for prosecuting the war on terrorism.

9:33 - Bachmann firmly states that it was "wrong" for the United States to go to war with Libya.

9:36 - Huntsman: "We can't run from science." He says other (unspecified) candidates have made "comments that don't reflect the reality of the situation" including denying what 98% of scientists say on climate change and denying evolution.

9:45 - Perry slowly, dramatically lists capital crimes and says if you come to Texas and do them, "you will be executed."

9:49 - Paul has the last word, saying he rejects the idea that if he's against federal government benefits, he lacks compassion. It's compassionate to understand that the most effective way to care for children is through the free market.

ADDED: That was a solid, substantive, lively debate. The moderators did a good job of keeping the candidates reined in without cutting them off so soon that they struggled to make their points. There was a good mix of gotcha questions and broader "What do you think about this issue?" questions. The MSNBC debate led by Brian Williams far outdid the debate back in June hosted by CNN and led by John King. Between tonight's debate and the previous FoxNews debate, CNN has a high standard to meet when it hosts the next debate, on Monday, September 12.

As for the candidates, I'm not going to claim to be impartial — I'm rooting for Romney. I was hoping that finally appearing on stage next to everyone else would remove some of Perry's luster. I don't know if that happened or not. The conventional wisdom seems to be that Romney "won" the debate, but Jon Chait says Romney lost to Perry by being too reasonable:

The media seems to consider Romney the winner. Pardon the condescension, but they’re not thinking like Republican base voters. Romney approaches every question as if he is in an actual debate, trying to provide the most intellectually compelling answer available, within the bounds of political expediency. Perry treats questions as interruptions. What scientists do you trust on climate change? I don’t want to risk the economy. Are you taking a radical position on social security? We can have reasons or we can have results. His total liberation from the constraints of reason give Perry a chance to represent the Republican id in a way Romney simply cannot match.

In this way Perry eerily apes the style of George W. Bush, who was also mocked for his intellectually vapid debating style, but who succeeded in rallying Republicans behind him. I don’t think it’s a coincidence. I suspect the Bush-Perry debating style broadcasts a subliminal message of strong leadership. Romney feels compelled to bind himself to the parameters of the question before him. Perry ignores them. It is, in a sense, an alpha male move. I am not going to lower myself to your premise about scientists. I am going to declare my principles.

In my view, Perry established his alpha male style, and that impression will matter more than any position or statement he’s made.

Gauging the liberal mood on Obama's jobs speech

See if you can detect a subtle change in Ezra Klein's mood based on two of his articles about speeches by Barack Obama.

The first is from January 3, 2008, the night of the 2008 Iowa caucuses, after Obama gave his first victory speech of the campaign:

Obama's finest speeches do not excite. They do not inform. They don't even really inspire. They elevate. They enmesh you in a grander moment, as if history has stopped flowing passively by, and, just for an instant, contracted around you, made you aware of its presence, and your role in it. He is not the Word made flesh, but the triumph of word over flesh, over color, over despair. The other great leaders I've heard guide us towards a better politics, but Obama is, at his best, able to call us back to our highest selves, to the place where America exists as a glittering ideal, and where we, its honored inhabitants, seem capable of achieving it, and thus of sharing in its meaning and transcendence.

In the days to come, just as in the days that have passed, I'll talk much more about Obama's policies. About his health care policy, and his foreign policy, and his social policy, and his economic policy. But so much as I like to speak of white papers and scored proposals, politics is not generally experienced in terms of policies. It's more often experienced in terms of self-interest, and broken promises, and base fears, and half-truths. But, very rarely, it's experienced as a call to create something better, bigger, grander, and more just than the world we have. When that happens, as it did with Robert F. Kennedy, the inspired remember those moments for the rest of their lives. . . .

The politician who gets the most votes merits our congratulations. But the politician who enlarges our politics and empowers more Americans to step forward into the public square deserves our gratitude.

Now, here's Ezra Klein writing a few days ago about President Obama's upcoming jobs speech to a joint session of Congress:

I’ve stopped pretending that the president’s jobs speech scheduled for next week is going to matter. I’m tired of speculating about what it will contain and whether its proposals will be big or small, bold or timid.

Here is what will actually happen: President Barack Obama will give a speech. It will include a mixture of ideas the administration has pushed for some time (extending the payroll tax cut, investing in infrastructure, passing trade agreements) and some modest new additions (a tax cut for companies that hire new workers, for example). Relatively few people will tune in to the speech; of those who do, most will be either committed Obama supporters or equally committed detractors. . . .

Obama’s speech will achieve nothing. It will go nowhere because it has nowhere to go. . . .

The interest in the president’s speech is just a function of the fact that people who discuss politics and policy for a living need to seem like we’re doing something through the long summer months. The administration needs to look like it’s acting to create jobs, the media need to appear to be reporting news, the pundits need to generate opinions about it all.

This is the part of the column where, as a pundit, I lay out my three-point, politically implausible plan to turn the situation around. This is where I tell the president to fight harder, or take his message directly to the people, or fire up the lethargic Obama for America organization. This is where I remind the Republicans that they supported tax cuts as stimulus all through the last decade and even into 2009; where I beg them to put country before party; where I warn them that everything they are doing unto the Democrats today will be done unto them tomorrow. This is where I summon history to show how FDR or Reagan or Truman broke a similar logjam.

But such exhortations -- and I am guilty of writing variations on these many times over -- are pointless today. The facts are what they are. And what they are is depressing and unlikely to change.

So, it's safe to say Ezra Klein isn't predicting that President Obama's big speech on jobs in the middle of the primary campaign season is going to be one of his finest speeches?

But wait, Jonathan Chait at The New Republic does have a plan for Obama to accomplish something with his jobs speech. It's summed up in the headline of his article:

Obama's Best Hope on the Jobs Crisis: Convincing Us He's Not in Charge

Notice that Chait isn't saying Obama should be worried that his speech might give the impression that he's feckless on the economy. He says this is the best-case scenario for Obama.

In another piece, Chait points out that the White House's supposed interest in historical analogies to presidents who won reelection while unemployment was high — FDR and Reagan — "sounds like pure delusion":

Roosevelt in 1936 and Reagan in 1984 had high unemployment, yes. But they also had very rapid economic growth. . . .

These were situations where the public could discern rapid improvement from a bad situation. No such thing is likely to be the case next year. 1936 and 1984 are not good lessons. They're counter-examples . . . .

Americans are very, very unhappy. Obama's task is to persuade them to blame Republicans. Running an election taking credit for, well, anything is a terrible idea.

Is it effective to argue that homosexuality "isn't a choice"?

Julia Galef has a post in 3 Quarks Daily called "Pushing the right beliefs, for the wrong reasons." It's about the general problem of how to balance one's desire to make good arguments with the desire to succeed in winning over your opponents.

She gives a lot of examples, but I want to focus on what she says about sexual orientation:

[I]f you take the approach of convincing someone with the evidence that is more convincing to him personally, but which isn’t the real reason you believe the claim in question, then you’re setting yourself up for failure if that evidence turns out to be false. So, for example, I know a lot of people who make the case against discrimination of gays by arguing that homosexuality is innate. And judging from the ubiquity of that argument, it does seem to be one of the most persuasive arguments for gay rights as far as the general public is concerned.

Yet while I agree that the evidence is overwhelming that homosexuality is innate, I’m loath to make that argument, because in my opinion that’s not the real reason we shouldn’t discriminate against homosexuals. The real reason, as far as I’m concerned, is that it’s none of our business if consenting adults want to sleep with each other, as long as they’re not hurting anyone else. By making the “homosexuality is innate” argument, I’d be staking my anti-discrimination case on an empirical question which, if it unexpectedly turned out to be false, would seriously undermine what is actually a very worthwhile case.

But it’s possible that’s a risk worth taking. . . . I’m not at all certain where to draw the line on the spectrum of persuasion, from smiles at one end to lies at the other. But at the least, I think it’s important to recognize that there is often a tradeoff between a good argument and a persuasive one, and to ask ourselves what our goal really is: improving people’s beliefs, or improving the processes of reasoning that they use to arrive at their beliefs?

I agree that this is often a tough tradeoff, but I wonder why the sexual orientation issue even presents this dilemma.

The question of what causes homosexuality may be interesting for academic or scientific purposes. But I don't understand why anyone sees the need to debate it in the context of a political discussion.

How is it anybody's business what actually contributed to a stranger's sexual and romantic and emotional attractions and commitments to another stranger?

People are going to find these activities either acceptable or unacceptable based on the consequences that flow from those activities — not based on what caused them.

Homosexuality and bisexuality and heterosexuality should be accepted whether they're caused by biology or upbringing or culture or even free choice. They should be accepted because they are clearly good things, not because of an esoteric, endless debate about their origins. They're good things because they lead to happiness and human flourishing and security.

Not all sexuality is acceptable. For example, pedophilia is unacceptable, immoral, and illegal. Now, I don't know why pedophiles are the way they are. And for purposes of any legal or political or moral debates, I don't care. All we need to know is that pedophiliac acts have harmful consequences. Whether those acts can be attributed to "nature" or "nurture" or "free will" is beside the point.

Of course, some people view homosexuality similarly to pedophilia, as a "deviant" "lifestyle" that shouldn't be tolerated. We should fight against this attitude, but not the part of the attitude that calls homosexuality or bisexuality a "lifestyle" or a "choice." Why would anyone want to devalue the words "lifestyle" and "choice" by insisting that they not be used to describe anything positive? Why would anyone (especially those who consider themselves "liberal" or "libertarian") condition their acceptance of others' sexual/romantic behavior on the idea that the behavior isn't a "choice"? Choice is not a bad thing. Choice is part of freedom. To be clear, I'm not saying that "homosexuality is a choice." I simply have no idea if it is, and I don't see how this question is of any concern to anyone (outside of academia or idle curiosity). And I know that people of all sexual orientations — especially bisexuals! — at least choose to act on their leanings. And there's nothing wrong with that.

It's popular, but hopeless, to insist that we keep our "morality" separate from government policy. It's easy to say, but no one follows it. The same people who say this about gay rights (and abortion) will advance their other views by saying things like: "Health care is a moral issue!" "The environment is a moral issue!" "Poverty is a moral issue!" These statements are almost always meant to suggest that the government should be involved in health care, the environment, and poverty, not that it should stay away from these issues.

You can't order people to selectively turn off their morality. People are going to exercise their faculties of moral thinking whether you'd like them to or not. What you can do is try to change their moral views.

I do like Jonah Goldberg's solution. Here's my rough paraphrase of his argument (from 2002):

(1) It is simply not clear how much of homosexuality is a choice vs. environmental vs. inborn. Maybe it's all of those things. Who knows?

(2) But even if it's actually a choice or environmental, we still don't really know anything about how people become gay.

(3) So, for practical purposes, people are essentially born gay.

From this, Goldberg concludes:

The crux of the issue is that for all practical purposes, it doesn't matter how so-called "waverers" became gay. Because they are that way now. And unless conservatives are going to endorse some pretty draconian and, more to the point, unenforceable policies, gays aren't going to go away or be "cured."

Despite everything I've written above, I do basically assume that people are either gay or bisexual or straight, and they don't have a choice in the matter. But this is just an assumption, not a firm belief, and it isn't the reason I'm accepting of gays and bisexuals.

Supporters of gay rights are mistaken if they believe that having this debate is going to clinch their position. They're not thinking about things from the other side's perspective. Someone who's committed to the belief that homosexuality will cause the downfall of civilization won't be heartened by knowing that homosexuality is genetically rooted. (In fact, contrary to popular belief, a perception that behavior is innate usually leads to more stigmatizing, since the supposedly bad behavior is seen as an ineradicable part of the person who does it.)

The reason gays should be accepted isn't that they have no choice in their sexual leanings or behavior. Again, that would call into question how to deal with bisexuals; even if you think they have no choice about their preference for either gender, they do have the option of only acting on their attraction to the opposite sex. (In fact, bisexuals might find this the far easier option, since there are so many more available mates of the opposite sex than of the same sex.) The only way to bring about acceptance of homosexuality and bisexuality is to make the case that they are affirmatively good for the same reasons heterosexuality is good.