You heard it here first – Friedman on Cheney

In Thomas Friedman’s Wednesday column in the New York Times, he reiterates a point that I made several months ago: climate change and nuclear proliferation present similarly grave threats to humanity’s future on Earth.  Furthermore, as Dick Cheney apparently preceded both of us in pointing out, the catastrophic nature of certain potential outcomes from climate change or nuclear proliferation, even if such outcomes are unlikely, makes preparation for – or aversion of – those outcomes imperative.

Dick Cheney, of course, was merely using the “one percent doctrine”, as Ron Suskind called it, as an excuse for doing whatever he wanted.  What’s shocking is Cheney’s inability to see that his own argument applies to global warming.  How can so many people who believe we should hunt terrorists to the ends of the Earth just to avoid the small possibility of a nuclear attack not believe that we should convert to a green economy to avoid the small possibility that humanity will be wiped out by extreme weather?  The reverse question applies, too: how can so many environmentalists not believe every person entering the United States should undergo a full body cavity search, or that we should occupy every nation that even might be harboring terrorists?

Is it possible that people just don’t understand the one percent doctrine?  My own previous explanation may have gotten lost in verbiage, so here’s a simpler way of thinking about it.  Suppose you have a farm with a thousand apple trees.  If you lose more than five hundred trees in a given year, you will go out of business.  Now suppose there was a pestilence going about, and you estimated that there was a ten percent chance that you would lose a hundred trees… would it make sense to buy insurance, at slightly unfair odds, against the pestilence?  No, because even if it hit, you would only lose a hundred trees, and you could just hope to have better luck next year.  But what if there was a two percent chance that you would lose five hundred trees?  Then it would make sense to buy insurance, even if the odds were slightly unfair, because you’d want to avoid the possibility of going out of business.

In just the same way, nuclear proliferation and climate change call for an aggressive response.  Sure, the recent revelations of fraudulent scientific activity cast doubt on years of global warming research, but to the average citizen, shouldn’t it appear that there’s at least a chance that there’s enough other research out there to indicate that global warming is real to justify action?  If there’s a one percent chance that the scientists aren’t lying, don’t we have to take the threat to humanity’s existence seriously?

Keeping David Brooks Honest

David Brooks is the only of the New York Times columnists other than the excellent Krugman that I read with any regularity.  He’s been called, with some merit, the “thinking man’s conservative”.

Brooks occasionally produces good points, and occasionally writes a real whopper of a column.  Today was such a day.  In today’s column, he started off with a gimmicky comparison between two “friends” of his, David Hume, the notorious Scottish skeptic and atheist, and Jeremy Bentham, a utilitarian.

Perhaps it was apparent what the column would be from the start, but it degenerated to its destination even more rapidly than I expected, with it quickly becoming obvious that one of the friends – Hume – was Republicans, and the other – Bentham – was the Democrats.  Bentham has a million razzle-dazzle proposals about how he’s going to make the world a better place… he means well, but he doesn’t comprehend his own ignorance.  Meanwhile, Hume is paralyzed by indecisiveness, not even knowing what wine to order with lunch because he doesn’t know what entree you’ll choose.

Because yeah, Republicans are so indecisive.  Like the Republicans Brooks is comparing Hume to, of course, Hume quickly comes to the conclusion (decision, decisively) that the magic of the free market will solve everything.  On health insurance, he says “Why don’t we just set up insurance exchanges with, say, 12 different competing policies?  We’ll let everybody choose a policy, and we’ll let people keep any money they save.”  That sounds like a pretty specific solution to me.

What’s worse, Brooks is proposing this solution not because he’s really “in the dark” about what will work and what won’t work, he’s proposing it because he thinks that this itself is the solution that will work.  As I said, this is not an agnostic solution, this is a religious devotion to the “magic of the market”, even if it’s a government-created market, that is not different in kind from Democratic technocracy, but is in fact its exact mirror image.

In the end, at least as far as Brooks’s friends are concerned, both Bentham and Hume are utilitarians.  They both want what’s best – profitable, useful, full of utility – for the people, they just disagree on what the best way to get it is… and they disagree on what some of the facts are.  Republicans, not wanting to tackle global warming, prefer to dispute its existence.  (I’ll give this more thought in a coming post, I may be being a bit unfair there…)

Brooks has his own agenda too.  In the end, he uses this alleged difference between Hume and Bentham that he has discovered to argue that Democrats are more susceptible to lobbyists.  He’s got a good point… no Republican has ever taken money from a lobbyist, not one, not ever.  To state more strongly, both parties are exactly the same in this respect, or at least if you’re going to argue that they’re not, give some hard numbers, instead of a crappy analogy that abuses two of the greatest thinkers of recent history, both of whom are probably spinning in their graves over how they are portrayed in this column.

True skepticism is not even knowing if these are the problems we should be tackling.  If you want to see an agnostic throwing his hands up in the air at what government should be up to these days, read my post on Real Big Problems.  Don’t look to Brooks’s “I’ve got your answer right here with all my razzle-dazzle proposals” Hume.  I’m the true ignoramus.  I have no idea what today’s problems are.

Roman Polanski and the French

This time the cheese-eating surrender monkeys have gone too far.  In contemplating the recent detainment of Roman Polanski, the man who had sex with a thirteen-year-old girl, the New York Times cites the opinion of a former French cultural minister, Jack Lang:

“…for Europeans the development showed that the American system of justice had run amok.   ‘Sometimes, the American justice system shows an excess of formalism… like an infernal machine that advances inexorably and blindly.’”

In essence, Lang’s point is an argument that individuality should trump the laws.  Because Roman Polanski is a great artist, the venial sin of having sex with a minor ought to be forgiven.  After all, it’s been a long time, and it’s just a little law that was broken.  He’s paid his dues and then some, right?  The characterization of the American justice system as “running amok” (the Times’s, not Lang’s) and “an infernal machine” “inexorably and blindly” advancing seem intended to communicate the idea that the American justice system is behaving in an out of control way, and being destructive rather than creative.

This idea is exactly correct, if you consider that art and civility are being destroyed by that nasty business of the detention – much more nasty than coercive sex with minors.  It is not correct, however, if you consider that the American justice system is not so much “running amok” as doing exactly what its creators intended for it to do, which is to administer justice, blindly and dispassionately.  The justice system was intended to create justice, not to preserve corrupt artists.  It was intended to be blind!

Nonetheless, Lang and the Times seem to believe that at some point, the justice system should just stop if the art community and the good people of France tell it to do so.  Because it does not, it is “running amok”.  They seem to believe that it is the duty of prosecutors to wink and condone the sins of the great, rather than being so formal, and to weigh the balance of a person’s accomplishments before prosecuting his crimes.

The point is a good one if you believe that the rich, the powerful, and the talented should be above the law.  It suffers, though, if you believe that laws exist precisely to enforce a certain level of equality and decency that are apt to be discarded by those rich and powerful.  To the Times, I say “For shame!”  Recall the story of Charondas, dictator of Catana: in order to prevent the intimidation of the public by displays of force, he ordered that no citizen should be permitted to wear arms in public assembly, on pain of death.  One day, after suppressing a band of brigands who had been causing terror in the city, he rushed to an assembly on the subject, forgetting to disarm.  A citizen reproached him for breaking his own law, to which he responded, “I will rather confirm it.”  So saying, he drew his sword and slew himself.

Charondas, unlike Roman Polanski, acknowledged the supreme value of laws over the judgment of individuals, which is so often blinded by a moment’s vicissitude or the perspective of inflamed passions.  One might even argue that Charondas saw that, even if it appeared unjust that he himself should be punished for a law that he had not intended to break, the greater justice was that it be forcefully illustrated to all of the citizens that the law must always be obeyed.

Charondas had the humility of Socrates, another Greek who had great respect for the law: the story of “Crito” lays out Socrates’ reasons for accepting the capital punishment at the hands of his people despite the apparent injustice of the sentence.  Wikipedia summarizes the arguments with more clarity than I could possibly preserve.

Charondas and Socrates had the humility to put the laws over themselves even when the stakes were their own lives.  Polanski had the arrogance to put his own enjoyment above the laws for far lower stakes.  I will hope that the laws punish not just his original misdeed, but the damage his arrogance – or cowardice – has done to the idea of blind and equal justice across the board.

A footnote: the Times has recently come under fire (summarized here) for inadequate coverage of the Acorn scandal.  Its excuse then was that it was incompetent.  What’s the excuse this time?  How does a supposedly illustrious journalistic enterprise excuse this piece of wandering, rhapsodic crap?  Is this bag of bigoted anecdotes journalism?  Are you kidding me?