Better Angels

These Things I Believe (which is why I have no party and I must scream)

While I more or less identify as a libertarian (and they'll only have me because there's nothing they can really do about it), the reality is that I don't fully belong to any party or ideology.

This isn't one of those meaningless "I reject political labels" statements that can only be made by politicians who are in fact perfectly described by the label they are busy rejecting, this is more of a slightly disappointing acceptance of reality.

I read blogs and listen to podcasts from a variety of political viewpoints (well, except for Leftist stuff, as I absorbed all that I can ever possibly need in my first 30-some years) and I get much out of them, but I always find myself in significant disagreement with some central tenet of the party or ideology I'm listening to.

Probably this is for the best, uncomfortable as it is. It means I am forever on my toes, always probing to find the areas where I disagree with someone, always knowing I can't take everything said at face value. Exhausting yet liberating.

Why do I find myself in this situation? Well, see if you can spot the items that put me at odds with each ideology/party out there:

• I believe absolutely in freedom of speech and thought.

• I believe absolutely in the freedom and basic rights of women and all people, even those who live in countries other than the one I happen to be in.

• I believe slavery and oppression are bad regardless of religion or country.

• I do not believe in God.

• I do not believe in talking other people out of believing in God.

• I am very uncomfortable with guns and unable to muster enthusiasm when it comes to restrictions on them.

• I believe in killing people who intend harm to my country.

• I believe in overthrowing oppressive regimes when doing so aligns with my country's interests, and in not interfering otherwise even if there are moral reasons to do so.

• I believe all immigration is good -- legal, illegal, whatever -- and welcome every well-meaning immigrant who comes to my country to create a better life.

• I believe economic liberty and a free market system are central to wealth and health and overall liberty.

• I believe that a government and government intervention are critical to the existence of a civil society.

• I believe that government intervention in any sphere of life should be thought of like chemo-therapy: Unfortunately necessary, to be applied as much as required but not one whit more, and of no benefit if it kills the patient before the cancer does.

• I believe that the ills of too much of a free market are infinitely preferable to the ills of too much government.

• I believe in freedom of choice when it comes to abortion.

• I believe that if you believe abortion is murder, then the only morally-acceptable view is that abortion should be illegal in all cases except where the life of the mother is at stake.

• I believe that most popular tenets of environmentalism -- organic food, locally-produced goods, zero landfill -- are magical thinking designed to make the thinker feel good, and almost always result in the worst possible decisions for helping the planet or the people on it.

• I believe adults should be allowed to do as they wish if they are not harming others.

• I do not believe that adults doing whatever they wish means they always do what they should, but I believe liberty trumps morality and practicality.

• I believe humans bring meaning to nature, and that nature has no inherent benefit or usefulness without humans to make use of it.

• I believe that I must be wrong about a great many things, and therefore should always proceed with humility and do my best to test my beliefs against the arguments of others.

If none of these statements pissed you off -- well, first I don't believe you, and second perhaps we should start a new movement together!

Have the courage of your convictions: Dare to acknowledge the downside of your philosophy

"As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals."

-- President Obama, addressing the nation

"If you can't tell me what's wrong with your candidate or ideology, sit on some other bar stool, bub."

-- Me, bloviating on the Internets

It has struck me lately that we all too often perceive a miraculous purity in how the universe works. That is, if everyone just followed your beliefs related to politics and economics and morality, there would be no trade offs. Your beliefs result in both moral superiority and practical benefit. There would be no trade offs, say, to pick something randomly, between safety and ideals.

Well, poppycock.

If you want to live in a fantasy world in your head, fine. If you want to live in the same world as the rest of us, then there is no meaning to your ideology if you do not have to accept and acknowledge the bad that comes with the good.

Do you, like me, find the idea of the U.S. engaging in torture extremely distasteful at minimum and possibly completely unacceptable at maximum? If so, you don't get to also claim "torture doesn't work anyway". Maybe it doesn't, but it doesn't matter. If you actually believe torture is wrong in all cases (I won't go that far, but I go pretty far), then your belief is only meaningful and moral if you are willing to clearly and publicly say that you don't think we should torture even if it would help prevent terrorist attacks. If you can't say both, then you are pretending the world works exactly the way you want in all cases, not however it happens to play out in reality.

Do you believe we shouldn't profile people in airports and wire tap domestic conversations because it's an erosion of liberty? Great, but you don't get to base your argument on the idea that "it doesn't do any good anyway" and (as I've heard from colleagues) "there wouldn't have been any more terrorist attacks if we hadn't taken military action and hadn't passed the Patriot act" -- you have to stand up and say, "We should not wire tap domestic calls even if it means we suffer more deaths in this country as a result." I happen to think there are few restrictions on liberty we should accept in response to terrorism...and I think we should accept that in fact more of us will be killed as a result. But the principle of liberty is worth it.

Is it worth it to you? If not, then examine yourself and realize if you can't accept the possible consequences of your beliefs without magically wishing them away then you may not actually believe in what you think you do.

Bush Fatigue: Proposing Dètente On Referencing The Former President

Given that I'm not the biggest fan of Obama's actions so far, it'll come as no surprise that I'm tired of hearing from him and his supporters that everything bad in the world is his fault through eight years of action or inaction. 

Perhaps it will surprise you, though, that I'm equally tired of hearing from my otherwise favorite non-leftist bloggers and commentators "If Bush/Palin had said/done that, we'd never hear the end of it from Jon Stewart and the mainstream media..." 

I can't count how many times I encounter instances of both these statements in a week. But it's too many. Way too many. 

So here is my Modest Proposal: Let's all posit that we are all, in fact, RIGHT about both of these things. Everything IS Bush's fault, and if Bush/Palin had said any of those stupid things Obama/Biden has said, we WOULD never hear the end of it. 

Got that? It's all true. Case closed. Al Gore has spoken and the debate is over. 

Now let's move on and agree to blame everything on Barney Frank. 

(Works for ME!)

Review of 'A Slobbering Love Affair': Goldberg is no Freddoso

The first complete book I read using the iPhone Kindle app is Bernard Goldberg's A Slobbering Love Affair: The True (And Pathetic) Story of the Torrid Romance Between Barack Obama and the Mainstream Media. I paid the standard "new book" Kindle price of $9.99, which given the length of the book (very short) and the lack of new insight, I consider about $7 too much.

And maybe three bucks is being too kind, not because there's no insight in this book, but because there is absolutely not one word or fact that any reader of non-liberal blogs wouldn't have been aware of for months by now. Using Google to do a review of blog posts on the mainstream media's treatment of Obama would get you as much or more information in short order at no cost.

And frankly, that's what I recommend you do if you are curious about the subject.

It seems to me there are two potential audiences for this book. The first audience is those people who weren't obsessively reading blogs throughout the campaign season, who are not "in the tank" liberals, and who now want to understand how our President came to be elected. The second is the people of the future: Those who, years or decades hence, want to look back on and understand this election. Unfortunately, neither of these audiences is served, for pretty much the same reason.

That is, this book strangely assumes a pretty intimate knowledge of the just-completed campaign. So it's preaching to people who by definition already know the details. Two key examples:

Joe the Plumber: Goldberg devotes a "chapter" to Joe (where chapter is defined as a couple of pages, near as I could tell, having to judge while reading in a format not conducive to communicating page count) in which he does not explain little details like:

• Who Joe the Plumber is.

• How he came to interact with Obama.

• What questions he asked of Obama.

• How he ended up a public figure.

• Why the media and the left felt he was important enough to publicly destroy (beyond the simple statement that he was going after their candidate).

What's left is a jumble of mini-facts about how the media went after Joe for not being a plumber and for owing back taxes. Any reader not fully versed in who Joe is will be left bewildered about why this chapter is even in the book and will come away not one whit more clueful about the situation. It reads like some notes thrown together and included in the book by accident.

Sarah Palin: While Goldberg provides a bit more content about Palin, it's still a scattered mess lacking context. He launches into a list of things the media called her without any summary of her history, her political views, how she was introduced to the country, why people were surprised by her inclusion on the ticket, etc. He references Andrew Sullivan's conspiracy theory about Trig not being Palin's child without having previously mentioned who Trig is, explaining what the conspiracy theory was, providing a single detail debunking it, or discussing how this bizarre theory came about or held on.

Suffice it to say this is no The Making of the President, 1960 or even The Case Against Barack Obama: The Unlikely Rise and Unexamined Agenda of the Media's Favorite Candidate.

I regret that I didn't post a review of David Freddoso's excellent Case Against when I read it, and perhaps I'll go back and rectify that soon. For our current purposes, suffice it to say that given an author who I was warned was a wacko partisan, I was pleasantly surprised to find that his book was no screed. It was instead a calm fact-filled look at the political history of Obama, providing insight on the man and politician through well-researched history organized in an engaging and in-depth manner. Its only agenda and conclusion (spoiler!) was to call on the reader to treat Obama as a politician like any other politician, which is what he is. This is a book that in years hence researchers and academics will be able to reference and learn from (not that they will, but they could!). This is a book that anyone, no matter how well-versed going in, is likely to learn a number of new things from.

Goldberg's book, on the other hand, may well leave you knowing less than you did before you started reading it.

If you feel this review is overly short and doesn't provide nearly enough information about what Goldberg covers...well, then you know exactly how I felt on finishing his book.

Excerpts From 'Reading Lolita in Tehran On the iPhone Kindle App'

"Criminals should not be tried. The trial of a criminal is against human rights. Human rights demand that we should have killed them in the first place when it became known that they were criminals."

-- Ayatollah Khomeini

I don't have a Kindle but I do have an iPhone, so when Amazon released the Kindle app for the iPhone, I was interested in seeing how workable it is to read a book on the phone. Given that I often spend hours a day reading blog posts and email on the phone, doesn't seem like too much of a stretch, and so far so good.

My inaugural book is Reading Lolita in Tehran, a book simultaneously deconstructing Nabokov and discussing the life of women in Islamic Iran. I have mixed feelings about the prose, but it is growing on me. More important than any feelings about the quality of the writing, there are a few sequences that really jumped out at me so far and I thought I'd go ahead and share them.

The first just emphasizes the...well, you don't need me to put up neon signs for this, just read it yourself:

"I have to tell you that the Ayatollah himself was no novice in sexual matters," Nassrin went on. "I've been translating his magnum opus, The Political, Philosophical, Social and Religious Principles of Ayatollah Khomeini, and he has some interesting points to make."

"But it's already been translated," said Manna. "What's the point?"

"Yes," said Nassrin, "parts of it have been translated, but after it became the butt of party jokes, ever since the embassies abroad found out that people were reading the book not for their edification but for fun, the translations have been very hard to find. And anyway, my translation is thorough -- it has references and cross-references to works by other worthies. Did you know that one way to cure a man's sexual appetites is by having sex with animals? And then there's the problem of sex with chickens. You have to ask yourself if a man who has had sex with a chicken can then eat the chicken afterwards. Our leader has provided us with an answer: No, neither he nor his immediate family or next-door neighbors can eat of that chicken's meat, but it's okay for a neighbor who lives two doors away."

On the darker side...

A fortnight earlier, Sanaz and five of her girl-friends had gone for a two-day vacation by the Caspian Sea. On their first day, they had decided to visit her friend's fiance in an adjoining villa. Sanaz kept emphasizing that they were all properly dressed, with their scarves and long robes. They were all sitting outside, in the garden: six girls and one boy. There were no alcoholic beverages in the hour, no undesirable tapes or CDs. She seemed to be suggesting that if there had been, they might have deserved the treatment they received at the hands of the Revolutionary Guards.

And then "they" came with their guns, the morality squads, surprising them by jumping over the low walls. They claimed to have received a report of illegal activities, and wanted to search the premises. Unable to find fault with their appearance, one of the guards sarcastically said that looking at them, with their Western attitudes...What is a Western attitude? Nassrin interrupted. Sanaz looked at her and smiled. I'll ask him next time I run into him. The truth of the matter was that their search for alcoholic beverages, tapes and CDs had led to nothing, but they already had a search warrant and didn't want it to go to waste. The guards took all of them to a special jail for infractions in matters of morality. There, despite their protests, the girls were kept in a small, dark room, which they shared the first night with several prostitutes and a drug addict. Their jail wardens came into their room two or three times in the middle of the night to wake up those who might have dozed off, and hurled insults at them.

They were held in that room for forty-eight hours. Despite their repeated requests, they were denied the right to call their parents. Apart from brief excursions to the rest room at appointed times, they left the room twice -- the first time to be led to a hospital, where they were given virginity tests by a woman gynecologist, who had her students observe the examinations. Not satisfied with her verdict, the guards took them to a private clinic for a second check.

To summarize the rest of that story, the parents are told the girls were killed in a car accident, then finally manage to get them out but the girls are subjected to twenty-five lashes, and to top it all off Sanaz is treated as having brought this on herself by her parents and brother and is from then on subjected to more restrictions in her life.

If you ever find yourself slipping into that "all culture is relative" point of view wherein each country is basically the same, some with burqas and some without, I recommend grabbing a copy of Ayaan Hirsi Ali's Infidel, discussed in this post or Reading Lolita or heck any of the slew of "I was a woman in an Islamic state" books out there, several of which are on my audiobook list and which I'll no doubt discuss here after I listen to them.

Whatever you believe about how the US should interact with Islamic countries at a political level, it's important to remember the point of view of some of those, especially women, who have to actually live under the conditions imposed on them by Sharia law. In addition to Sharia law, there is this "manifest destiny"-style Islamic revolution concept that many of the leaders follow, and when you see Canada or Britain or France dealing with these issues it's particularly striking to recall those countries that, just a few years ago, were more or less Western-style democracies and are no longer.

As one of the sayings of Islamic revolutionaries goes:

One man, one vote, one time.

Mark Steyn is my second favorite committer of hate crimes against humanity

"Freedom of speech is an American concept, so I don't give it any value."
-- Dean Steachy, principal investigator for the Canadian Human Rights Commission

"Under the ludicrous British Columbia "Human Rights" Code, we are guilty."
-- Mark Steyn, committer of hate crimes against humanity

I've discussed Ezra Levant a couple of times, but inexcusably have yet to cover Mark Steyn, a newly-favorite writer of mine who has gone through a similar case of being brought before the Canadian Human Rights Commission for the crime of possibly having offended (or offending in the future) Muslims with an excerpt of his book, America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It, in which he criticizes various aspects of Islamic culture.

In my last post on Ezra Levant, I included an interview on the Michael Coren show in which Coren replayed a statement from Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, the guy who made the accusation against Steyn. Keep in mind this is the guy accusing Steyn of spreading hatred...a man who, to my knowledge, has never been brought before the Human Rights Commission (nor has any Muslim, I believe):

ELMASRY: ... and totally innocent people, obviously, is the children. But they are not innocent if they are part of a population which is total population of Israel is part of the army... From 18 on, they are part of the soldiers, even if they have civilian clothes.

COREN: So if Israeli children are killed, that is a valid use of military force by Palestinians?

ELMASRY: No, they are not valid...

COREN: So what are you saying?

ELMASRY: I'm saying that it has to be totally innocent, OK? Totally innocent are the children, obviously, OK? But they are not innocent if the army [inaudible] in civilian clothes, OK?

COREN: What about women?

ELMASRY: The same, if they are women in the army...

COREN: Anyone over the age of 18 in Israel is a valid target.

ELMASRY: Anybody above 18 is a part of the Israeli army...

COREN: So everyone in Israel and anyone and everyone in Israel, irrespective of gender, over the age of 18 is a valid target?

ELMASRY: Yes, I would say.

So we see what sort of person and system Steyn was up against. Now to get into the details of Steyn's case...Here are excerpts from Wikipedia's summary of the trial, with emphasis added by me:

Joseph Faisal, legal counsel for the Canadian Islamic Congress opened his arguments by stating that the article Maclean's published presented Muslims as "a violent people" who hold traditional Canadian values "in contempt," and depicted Islam as "inhuman" and "violent." He also argued that the cover image that Maclean's chose to run, the image of two Muslim women, along with the magazine's cover line, "could have been the picture of a horror cult movie." Faisal criticized "20 other articles" that ran in Maclean's, beginning in January 2005 that he claimed were offensive to Muslims and criticized Maclean's for publishing letters from readers praising the magazine and Steyn. Faisal added that "We're prepared to deal with those articles piece by piece, paragraph by paragraph, and those things that we find objectionable."

Faisal and Habib's complaint claims that Maclean's and Steyn, who wrote the article, violated Section 7-1 of British Columbia's Human Rights Code, which stipulates that a person must not publish or cause to be published anything that discriminates against a person or group, or exposes them to hatred or contempt. Under the BC Human Rights code, the complainants are not required to prove harm, or malicious intent; all that is required is a reasonable determination that the excerpt did express hatred and contempt toward Muslims, and likely caused it to spread.

Faisal implored the BC Human Rights Tribunal to take action, arguing that it is "the court of last resort. You are the only opportunity to right a terrible wrong to a clearly identifiable group numbering hundreds of thousands in this great country, and tens of thousands in the beautiful province of British Columbia. You are the only thing between racist, hateful, contemptuous Islamaphobic and irresponsible journalism, and law-abiding Canadian citizens."

...In his closing arguments, Faisal stated that "There has never been a case in this country that has had such clear, concise evidence, ever. There will never be any more demonstrable evidence of hatred that has been perpetrated by this article."

...Steyn told the media that he was hoping the tribunal would rule against Maclean's. "We want to lose so we can take it to a real court and if necessary up to the Supreme Court of Canada and we can get the ancient liberties of free-born Canadian citizens that have been taken away from them by tribunals like this," he said.

...The day after the hearing ended, Khurrum Awan, one of the complainants in the BC case, spoke to a meeting of the Canadian Arab Federation and complained that since Maclean's is not a member of the Ontario Press Council or any similar body there is no authority within the profession of journalism, that can "condemn the journalist, condemn the publication, direct them to publish a letter to the editor." He added that he would "love" to see the case appealed into the regular courts. Awan also stated that:

"And we have to tell them, you know what, if you're not going to allow us to do that, there will be consequences. You will be taken to the human rights commission, you will be taken to the press council, and you know what? If you manage to get rid of the human rights code provisions [on hate speech], we will then take you to the civil courts system. And you know what? Some judge out there might just think that perhaps it's time to have a tort of group defamation, and you might be liable for a few million dollars."

...On October 10, 2008, the HRC dismissed the complaint, stating that the Maclean's article did not violate the province's hate speech law. The tribunal stated that the article contained historical, religious and factual inaccuracies, relied on common Muslim stereotypes and tried to "rally public opinion by exaggeration and causing the reader to fear Muslims." However, they also ruled that the article was not likely to expose Muslims to hatred or contempt.

The Tribunal stated that "With all its inaccuracies and hyperbole, [the article] has resulted in political debate which, in our view, [B. C.'s hate speech human rights law] was never intended to suppress. In fact, as the evidence in this case amply demonstrates, the debate has not been suppressed and the concerns about the impact of hate speech silencing a minority have not been borne out."

...Mark Steyn, who wrote the offending article, stated that that a lesser-known writer without a media conglomerate in his corner probably would have been, adding that:

"For me the problem is not the book, the problem for me is Canada, and I will never think of the deranged dominion quite the same way again. It has made me understand just how easily and incrementally free societies, often for the most fluffy reasons, slip into a kind of soft, beguiling totalitarianism. I don't understand why they lack the cojones to find us guilty" and that "The only reason to go through all this nonsense is to get to the stage where you can appeal it to a real court, and if necessary up to the Supreme Court."

Steyn further criticized the Human Rights Commissions and Canadian politicians, stating that:

"they didn't like the heat they were getting under this case. Life was chugging along just fine, chastising non-entities nobody had ever heard about, piling up a lot of cockamamie jurisprudence that inverts the principles of common law, and nobody paid any attention to it. Once they got the glare of publicity from the Maclean's case, the kangaroos decided to jump for the exit. I've grown tired of the number of Canadian members of Parliament who've said to me over the last best part of a year now, 'Oh, well of course I fully support you, I'm fully behind you, but I'd just be grateful if you didn't mention my name in public.'"

Mark Hemingway wrote a good summary of all this (and more) for National Review's blog, entitled "Idiot’s Guide to Completely Idiotic Canadian ‘Human Rights’ Tribunals", which is well-worth reading. Mark Steyn wrote a response to a later post of Hemingway's:

Mark Hemingway is right to say that free speech in Canada "does not exist in any meaningful way". As the British Columbia "Human Rights" Tribunal's rambling and incoherent decision makes plain, Maclean's and I were acquitted of "flagrant Islamophobia" for essentially political reasons - because neither the court nor its travesty of a "human rights" code could withstand the heat of a guilty verdict. Jay Currie puts it well:

The way I read this decision is that it imposes a two part test: a) are your words offensive and hurtful? b) are you a major media organization with deep pockets represented by serious lawyers. If “a” and not “b” you are a hate monger; if “a” and “b” you are engaged in political debate.

Just so. Because we spent a ton of money and had a bigshot Queen's Counsel and exposed the joke jurisprudence and (at the federal "human rights" commission) systemic corruption, the kangaroo courts decided that discretion was the better part of valor. The Ontario "Human Rights" Commission ruled they weren't able to prosecute the case because of a technicality - I offered to waive the technicality, but the wimps still bailed out. If you have the wherewithal to stand up to these totalitarian bullies, they stampede for the exits. But, if you're just an obscure Alberta pastor or a guy with a widely unread website or a fellow who writes a letter to his local newspaper, they'll destroy your life.

I sympathize with the Canadian Islamic Congress, whose mouthpiece feels that, if the British Columbia pseudo-judges had applied the logic of previous decisions, we'd have been found guilty. He's right: Under the ludicrous British Columbia "Human Rights" Code, we are guilty. Which is why the Canadian Islamic Congress should appeal, and why I offered on the radio an hour ago to chip in a thousand bucks towards their costs.

Steyn said things that some people would consider offensive. He is guilty. There is no need for a concept of "free speech" unless it is offensive speech that is being protected. There is no need to protect non-offensive speech, and further there is no way for any debate to proceed without someone being willing to say something that someone else doesn't want to hear.

Here is a wide-ranging interview Steyn did on the Michael Coren show last June covering many of his beliefs:

Why you should buy Ezra Levant's new book and why you should actually pay attention to Canada

Last week a colleague at work explained to me that when the right-wing types needed a new enemy after the cold war was over, they settled on Islam, but this was a mistake since there's no plausible threat from Islamic countries.

I paused for a moment, not wanting to let my churning brain rush ahead of me and not wanting to do one of my typical head-exploding responses that just turn people off. Should I launch into tirades about the fatwa on Salman Rushdie, or the physical and mental mutilation endured by Ayaan Hirsi Ali and millions of women like her, or the formerly modern states brought to ruin by the imposition of Islamic law, known as Sharia law?

Finally I decided to call on events close to home, and said something like, "Ah yeah, but you know, I'm kind of concerned about the fact that Canada has been toying with Sharia law."

He hadn't heard anything about this. It's understandable -- the encroachment of Sharia law on Western countries is only one of the biggest and most relevant stories of our time, but after all we're talking about something happening in Canada, and who the hell pays attention to Canada?

Well, Mark Steyn and Ezra Levant do, since they both live (or lived) in Canada and have had the singular honor of being hauled in front of the Human Rights Commission there for daring to say things Muslims might not like to hear.

Levant dared to publish those pesky cartoons that Muslims were rioting and killing people over, as I discussed in some detail here.

He has now written a book on how the Human Rights Commission has terrorized numerous people in Canada for their disruptive and offensive points of view (though never, oddly, any Muslim for offending Jews or others), called Shakedown: How Our Government is Undermining Democracy in the Name of Human Rights. I've pre-ordered my copy.

Below are YouTube segments for an hour interview Levant did on the Michael Coren show in 2004, when his problems with the HRC were hitting the fan. Of related interest, Michael Coren twice plays an excerpt from a Muslim on his show the week before. Pay attention to this part, as it plays a role in my next post, on Mark Steyn.

Thanks! A note from AIG bonus recipients...

Lousy picture snapped quickly at a cafe in Ashland, Oregon, but you can see how this would be of use posted on the door of AIG...

UPDATED: Why does anyone care about gay marriage?

On the Big Hollywood blog, Charles Winecoff has an extensive post on the question of gay marriage and why gay activists push for it. The post is well worth reading, and contains much more background and explanation of his point of view than usual in this debate.

Winecoff is gay but ultimately is repulsed by the nature of the activism in the gay community on this issue:

I must be immune to gay marriage fever. Because I can’t help sympathizing with the citizens whose majority vote to defend their long-valued concept of marriage has been stigmatized as bigotry. The pro-8 voters I’ve talked to are resigned to the likelihood that the screaming minority will ultimately get its way, that gay marriage will come to California. So the psychological game, at least, is over.

The score: gays, one - black and Latino Obama voters, zero.

Still, why the sudden urgency, the live or die hysteria for gay marriage now - or else!? Last time I checked, gays and lesbians in California enjoyed more rights than their brothers and sisters in any other state. And I can’t recall any of my West Hollywood friends ever being dragged out of their homes in the middle of the night by police and never heard from again - or told by their employers they couldn’t get health benefits for their domestic partners.

What exactly is it that the affluent gay community here feels it doesn’t have?

There's much more to his post and I'm being unfair to just call this part out, so please do read the whole thing. To address the particular question of just why someone would want gay marriage today given what we already have, I replied with this:

As a gay mugged-by-9/11 ex-liberal I agree with a lot in this post and appreciate the fact that much more history and context has been provided than is usual when discussing this issue. The support of gay institutions for the most illiberal anti-gay anti-woman regimes on the planet is despicable, and the complete alignment of almost all gay institutions with a single party is ridiculous.

However, I take issue with the idea that gays who were getting married were putting on tears for the cameras, or that those of us who want marriage don't really want marriage, or want to destroy marriage in some fashion.

I know from direct experience that the "destroy marriage" people are out there (though perhaps in fewer numbers than before?) When I was one of those leading the charge for domestic partner benefits at Oracle, back when almost no one had heard of domestic partner benefits, I got reactions from some asking why I was pro-marriage and having gays from the military speak when I should be working to destroy the military and marriage.

But even though I was still a liberal back then, I had no interest in destroying either institution. And as someone who has a 22 year monogamous relationship but must live in fear of relatives swooping in to take our assets after my death, or to make life decisions for me if I become incapacitated, I have a very strong interest in the inviolable protections of marriage. Civil unions are nice, but they are not federal and if something happens to me in the wrong state, we are screwed. You can call it marriage or you can call it a civil union, but unless our relationship status is recognized and protected when it matters -- when some health or other personal disaster has occurred -- and recognized regardless of where we happen to be at that moment, then the problem has not been solved. And it's not a minor problem.

Personally I would be delighted to have the spiritual aspect of marriage left to churches and private consideration, while the state just hands out civil unions to gays or straights alike. However, as the situation is today, without marriage we are in a separate and unequal situation that very frequently penalizes gays severely. Ask any attorney who has to deal with gay issues after death or incapacitation -- it's a very ugly situation that no one in a loving long-term relationship deserves to be subjected to because of their gender or orientation.

I have no problem with people questioning the value and purpose of gay marriage, but please don't fall into the trap of portraying those who want marriage as being disingenuous or selfish. Argue the merits, not the motives, or you offend and deny those of us who are well-meaning participants in this debate and you risk appearing to use the same tactics as those liberals we all decry.

I will say that while some of the commentary to his post is inevitably head-slapping, it is mostly a good civil discussion of the issue, and the comments are worth reading as well.

UPDATE: Bookworm has also discussed the Big Hollywood post and I've gotten a good opportunity to explain my side of things in the comments and answer questions about why domestic partnership/civil unions don't measure up to actual marriage.

I can haz Instapundit? The new Better Angels Twitter feed, and another item or two.

After an aborted first attempt at Twitter, I'm now back in the saddle with it and finding blogging to be oh so 2008. And I've just realized that I can use Twitter to solve a problem that has been plaguing me...

My intent for this blog has been to provide reasonably in-depth posts and to try and combine with each post a couple of angles that people might not otherwise have been aware of. I explicitly did not want to emulate the excellent Instapundit and be a link redistributor without much extra content. I read Instapundit constantly, but, well, that site already exists and if there's one thing that annoys me about Glenn's efforts it's those times when he posts a link with no context, kicking off a debate in me about whether to take the time waiting for a page to load to discover whether I have any interest in the destination.

And yet...I realized that many times a day I was firing off a quick link in email to a couple of friends, often links that would be of interest to readers of this blog. But I didn't have the time or necessarily the knowledge to add the amount of content I would want for a blog post.

This is where Twitter comes in: I realized it's the perfect place to post links of potential interest without cluttering the blog posts, and even better I discovered that I can hook the Twitter items directly into the blog page (as you can see on the right side of the page) for those who don't want to get into the whole Twitter client thing.

So if you are interested in a steady stream of links on subjects relevant to this blog, including US politics, Islamic radicalism, economics and the like, please do follow the BetterAngels Twitter feed, or just check out the entries on this page once in a while.

If you are inexplicably interested in what video game I'm playing at the moment and which lolcat I'm lolling at, feel free to follow my personal Twitter feed or check up on it at the Avenging Angels blog.

One downside to using Twitter for this purpose is that it's difficult to provide hat tips to the sources where I got the links. I'll be sure to keep the sites I read frequently updated in the column on the right, and I'll probably do an occasional catch-all post for those who deserve credit for links I'm reposting.

On other slight changes...I haven't been blogging as much as I'd like recently, but it's not for lack of spewing my opinion onto the Internet. It's just that I've been putting more time into posting on other forums (which also tends to be an important way to have people discover this blog). Since I often put some quality time into those posts, I'm going to get in the habit of reproducing more of them here.