“I don’t doubt George Allen’s sincerity about how much he respects the institution of marriage. Hell, he respects it so much, he’s had two of them.”
– Radley Balko

Blogging has been light of late, and for that I apologize. My day job has sent me on some travel and I’ve been working more during the week. And on top of that I’ve started a second job (teaching), for which I’m in the middle of training right now. Yesterday, however, I did have a relaxing time at the Mo-Kan Comics Conspiracy. I picked up seven new sketches for my sketchbooks and had a great time talking to many of the creators, especially Howard Chaykin, Freddie Williams II, Phil Hester, and Ed Brubaker.

Note to all comic convention organizers: get Howard Chaykin to do a panel. He could read the phonebook without being boring.

“Perhaps if we saw what was ahead of us, and glimpsed the crimes, follies, and misfortunes that would befall us later on, we would all stay in our mother’s wombs, and then there would be nobody in the world but a great number of very fat, very irritated women.”
– Lemony Snicket

“Our civil rights have no dependence on our religious opinions, any more than our opinions in physics or geometry.”
– Thomas Jefferson

“If a person who indulges in gluttony is a glutton, and a person who commits a felony is a felon, then God is an iron.”
– Spider Robinson

A new study from the Cato Institute suggests that libertarians might be the new swing vote.

The libertarian vote is in play. At some 13 percent of the electorate, it is sizable enough to swing elections. Pollsters, political strategists, candidates, and the media should take note of it.

After examining the relevant polling data, Cato concludes that libertarians and libertarian sympathizers constitute somewhere between 10 and 20% of the American population. Some explanations are offered as to why libertarians constitute such a bigger constituency than one might expect. First is that libertarians tend not to be as well-organized as other interest groups. Most groups that organize and try to exert political influence want some sort of government action: unions want favorable labor laws passed, the Christian Coalition wants abortion outlawed and anti-homosexual laws passed, environmentalists want pollution restricted and ecosystems protected, businesses want favorable tax and commercial laws. Libertarians generally don’t want government to take action, and are therefore less likely to organize into a pressure group because of that. It also argues that the difficulty people have in breaking out of the left-right liberal-conservative paradigm of politics keeps “populists” (authoritarians) and libertarians underrepresented. While most political scholarship accepts the inadequacy of a simple one-dimensional view of politics, it hasn’t sunk down into popular culture as strongly. Often talk shows and debate programs on television and radio will feature someone “from the left” and someone “from the right”, squeezing libertarians out of the picture.

An unexplored reason that might contribute is the higher prevalence of libertarianism among younger people than older people. The Cato paper notes this statistic but doesn’t explore its relationship to voter turnout. It explains the phenomenon this way. Younger people were more influenced by 2 of the most significant individualist movements of the 20th century: the ’60s counter culture and the ’80s Reagan Revolution. As a result, younger generations have seen both the socially liberal and the economically conservative side of individualism and turn to libertarianism as a way to emulate both ideals. The downside is that since younger people in general are less likely to vote, libertarians wind up underrepresented at the polls.

But don’t libertarian have to swing their votes to become a swing vote? Well, more and more frequently libertarian-minded people are losing the loyalty to the party they usually vote for (mostly the GOP), which puts their vote as a bloc in play.

Many commentators noted the high turnout in the 2004 election. Nationally, voter turnout increased 6.1 percent. That might help explain some of the swing in 2004. According to ANES data, libertarians reported turning out to vote at higher percentages than total respondents in 2000 and even higher in 2004.

This libertarian swing trend is particularly pronounced by age. Libertarians aged 18–29— many of whom were new voters in 2004— voted 71–42 for Kerry. Libertarians aged 30–49 voted almost completely the reverse, 72–21 for Bush.

Going back to the generational argument, I imagine that older individuals who can remember a time when the religious Right wasn’t nearly as omnipresent of a force in the Republican Party and therefore don’t automatically associate it with tirades about the moral dangers of homosexuality and feticide. So I can understand younger libertarians leaning more democratic than older ones who might remember the time of more Goldwater-like or even maybe Reagan-like Republicans.

What does all this mean in practical terms? What will we see coming out of the major political parties

Conservatives resist cultural change and personal liberation; liberals resist economic dynamism and globalization. Libertarians embrace both. The political party that comes to terms with that can win the next generation.

It would really be great to see both political parties converge to a libertarian center. But as the article points out, the nature of libertarians makes them much harder to corral than other groups, which makes attracting us to their political parties a far more expensive and riskier proposition than going after churchgoers and soccer moms. Perhaps in time it will happen. But I doubt it will happen very soon.

“The press is never going to report judicial opinions accurately, they’re just going to report, who is the plaintiff? Was that a nice little old lady? And who is the defendant? Was this, you know, some scuzzy guy? And who won? Was it the good guy that won or the bad guy? And that’s all you’re going to get in a press report, and you can’t blame them, you can’t blame them. Because nobody would read it if you went into the details of the law that the court has to resolve. So you can’t judge your judges on the basis of what you read in the press.”
– Justice Antonin Scalia

“And why do we fall, Bruce? So we can learn to pick ourselves up.”
– Thomas Wayne (Batman Begins)

My own view is that the Churches should frankly recognise that the majority of the British people are not Christians and, therefore, cannot be expected to live Christian lives. There ought to be two distinct kinds of marriage: one governed by the State with rules enforced on all citizens, and the other governed by the Church with rules enforced by her on her own members. The distinction ought be to quite sharp, so that a man know which couples are married in a Christian sense and which are not.

– C.S. Lewis

A moment of silence, please, for the doctrine of habeus corpus, which finally died yesterday. Habeus corpus has been on death’s door before–see, e.g. The Civil War, World War I, and the Japanese Internment Camps. But it has always managed to come back once an enemy has been defeated. At least, in the United States. Elsewhere in the Anglo-Saxon sphere of influence, it’s been dead for years. But now that there is no enemy–just a nebulous collection of people randomly assigned the label “terrorist” or “Islamofascist” without regard for accuracy or definition (yes, I was guilty in the past of such linguistic crimes, too)–it appears that the doctrine may well and truly be dead.

Of course, if there is one constant in Western Civilization, it’s that of resurrection. So maybe there’s hope yet.

“Freedom of religion; freedom of the press, and freedom of person under the protection of the habeus corpus, and trial by juries impartially selected. These principles form the bright constellation which has gone before us, and guided our steps through an age of revolution and reformation. The wisdom of our sages and the blood of our heroes have been devoted to their attainment. They should be the creed of our political faith, the text of civil instruction, the touchstone by which we try the services of those we trust; and should we wander from them in moments of error or alarm, let us hasten to retrace our steps and to regain the road which alone leads to peace, liberty, and safety.”
– Thomas Jefferson, First Inaugural Address (emphasis added)

It’s black-letter law that a judge cannot be required to be a specific religion when he’s being nominated to be a judge. But what if that judge is elected? Well then we may have some problems.

Religion has entered the political fray in a race for an appellate court bench in east Texas.

The Austin-based Republican Party of Texas played the religion card in a Sept. 21 online newsletter. As alleged in the newsletter, Texarkana solo E. Ben Franks, Democratic nominee for a seat on the 6th Court of Appeals, “is reported to be a professed atheist” and apparently believes the Bible is a “collection of myths.’”

But Franks says he has never professed to be an atheist and is not a member of any atheist organization. Franks says no one with the Republican Party ever asked him whether he professes to be an atheist. However, he says he’s not surprised by the allegation.

“I’m not surprised at anything anybody says in politics anymore,” Franks says.

Anthony Champagne, a political science professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, says he has watched judicial races in Texas and other parts of the country for 25 years and has never before seen a judicial candidate accused of being an atheist.

People have a right to base their decisions regarding who to vote for on whatever criteria they choose. But there’s something downright repugnant about using a criteria considered so taboo there’s a clause in the Constitution preventing the government from using it. It’s even worse when a political party intentionally uses it to smear a judge out of office.

If there were ever an argument for judicial independence, this is it. Whenever judges have to stand for election, they will inevitably wind up torn between what their “constituents” want and what the law requires. Such conflicts are intolerable. Whether the laity is overly conservative and trying to strip most of the Bill of Rights, or is overly liberal and demanding evisceration of the Commerce Clause and other government-limiting clauses, a judge needs the independence to make his or her decisions based solely on what the law says rather than what might happen to their career as a result.

“The real blasphemy is certainty. God is beyond us.”
– Andrew Sullivan

I have been assured, by many, many people, whose taste I generally admire, that Battlestar Galactica is the best show currently on television.

And yet, I have yet to watch a single episode.

The problem here is threefold, and they are: Lost, Alias, and commericals.

Many of the same people who have encouraged me to watch Battlestar Galactica have also encouraged me to watch Lost and Alias. Well, I have watched the first couple of episodes of both Lost and Alias, and they are overrated, unmitigated shite. Lost is excruciatingly boring. Just B-O-R-I-N-G. Which I blame on the writers and directors, because the cast is top notch. Alias is so ridiculously unbelievable that it makes True Lies seem like a documentary on the activities of the CIA. Now, the absurdity of Alias might not be so bad, but the problem is that neither the actors nor the writers are good enough to make Alias FUN. It’s really annoyingly grim–and absurd. A bad combination. So when fans of these shows encourage me to watch something, I’m a little hesitant.

But the real thing that has made me hestitant about watching Battlestar Galactica are the commercials. Maybe it’s just the Sci-Fi Channels marketing department, but they make the show looks like it’s full of bad acting, false drama, and speechifying. Not to mention that the constant refrain of “This is the best show on television!” makes me all contrarian and disinclined to watch.

I know that people out there have encouraged me before, but seriously, should I watch Battlestar Galactica? Long comments are encouraged. If it helps, the shows that I am regularly watching right now are: Doctor Who, House, Studio 60, Heroes (the first episode of which was as boring as Lost, but redeemed itself in the next two episodes), My Name Is Earl, and Smallville (yes, Smallville is ridiculous, but it’s also a lot of fun).

“Going to church doesn’t make you a Christian any more than going to a garage makes you a car.”
– Laurence J. Peter

Cato Unbound is running an essay from Kos of the Daily Kos contending something I’ve been thinking about for a while now, a potential alliance between moderate liberals and libertarians to reform the Democratic party.

The case against the libertarian Republican is so easy to make that I almost feel compelled to stipulate it and move on. It is the case for the libertarian Democrat that has created much discussion and not a small amount of controversy when I first introduced the notion in what was, in reality, a throwaway blog post on Daily Kos on a slow news day in early June 2006.

But that post—as coarse, raw, and incomplete as it was—touched a surprising nerve. It generated the predictable criticism from libertarian circles (Reason and several Cato scholars piled on) as well as from conservatives who perhaps recognized their own slipping grasp of libertarian principles but were unwilling to cede any ground to a liberal. But more surprising (and unexpected) to me was the positive reaction: there’s a whole swath of Americans who are uncomfortable with Republican/conservative efforts to erode our civil liberties while intruding into our bedrooms and churches; they don’t like unaccountable corporations invading their privacy, holding undue control over their economic fortunes, and despoiling our natural surroundings; yet they also don’t appreciate the nanny state, the over-regulation of small businesses, the knee-jerk distrust of the free market, or the meddlesome intrusions into mundane personal matters.

Like me, these were people who didn’t instinctively reject the ability of government to protect our personal liberties, who saw government as a good, not an evil, but didn’t necessarily see the government as the source of first resort when seeking solutions to problems facing our country.

One thing that Kos said bothered me, partially because it’s semi-true. Kos describes modern libertarians as believing “that government is an evil, perhaps necessary, but still a grave threat to personal liberties requiring the utmost vigilance against its instincts for perpetual expansion.” This statement highlights a notable split within libertarians: what I’ll call Virtue Libertarians and Consequential Libertarians. Virtue Libertarians really do regard government as an evil. Consequential Libertarians don’t regard government as good or evil, just a poor way of achieving the goals that many would try to use it to achieve. And while Virtue Libertarians are likely going to respond to the notion of a libertarian/democrat alliance with the moral outrage (a side effect of regarding Libertarianism as inherently morally good), Consequential Libertarians might be

Then you have the interesting idea of Arnold Kling. From TCSDaily, he proposes that Libertarians and Democrats agree to support one policy of the other group that’s inconsistent with its own simply to see who’s right.

The experiment that I have in mind is school choice. If Democrats would instead prefer an experiment with voluntary investment accounts substituting for Social Security, that is an acceptable alternative. But for now, let us work with school choice.

The experiment that I propose is that in four or five diverse states, all tax revenues that ordinarily would go to schools would for a period of 15 years go to parents as school vouchers. Proponents of school choice will propose specific indicators that will be measured to assess whether the experiment achieves desired goals, such as improved school quality, lower cost, and greater parent satisfaction. Opponents of school choice also will propose specific indicators that will be measured to assess whether the experiment leads to greater inequality in schooling or other adverse results. After fifteen years, voters will have useful information to determine whether the experiment with school choice should be expanded or ended.

Traditional Democrats may say, “If we are willing to give libertarians an experiment, what do we get in return? Do we get a chance to experiment with our policies?”

I would welcome experiments with socialist policies, provided that they are only experiments. That is, the policies must be evaluated, and if they are found to have failed, they must be abandoned.

For example, I would welcome an experiment in which four or five diverse states adopt single-payer health care. My guess is that if people were to experience single-payer health care for ten or fifteen years, that would provide powerful evidence that it is a bad idea for the United States.

The notion of states as experimental laboratories from which other states can choose to copy or strike out in a new direction is perhaps as old as the Republic itself. It was used by, among others, Sandra Day O’Connor in her Supreme Court opinions. Additionally, this could give libertarians proof positive that, at least with respect to the 2 issues being experimented with, Libertarian policies work and socialist policies don’t. Perhaps an idea like Kling’s has merit to it. While there’s a lot of negotiation to be done and details to be filled in, exploring the possibility is certainly worth a shot, right?

“I pray devoutly every day, but being a Christian is no excuse for being stupid. There’s a high demagoguery coefficient to issues like prayer in schools. Demagoguery doesn’t work unless it’s dumb, shallow as water on a plate. These issues are easy for the intellectually lazy and can appeal to a large demographic. These issues become bigger than life, largely because they’re easy. There ain’t no thinking.”

– Dick Armey, former House Majority Leader

The Veterans’ Affairs administration provides free headstones to qualifying veterans. As with any freebie, there are restrictions. One of those restrictions is that you must select any religious emblem from their list of approved emblems. This might not be such a bad thing if all religions were represented. But as you can see from this list of approved emblems, there are some that are missing. Members of one of those religions, the Wiccan religion, have been lobbying the VA to approve their emblem for years, and have now sued to force them to approve it.

Wiccans, also called pagans [also called neopagans, eds.], are often wrongly confused with Satanists. Theirs is a nature-based religion recognized by the Internal Revenue Service, and by the military itself in its chaplains’ handbooks and on the dog tags that troops wear around their necks. There are an increasing number of Wiccans (pronounced WIK-ens) in the armed forces — 1,800, according to a Pentagon survey cited in the suit.

The American Civil Liberties Union, representing the plaintiffs, brought the action in the United States Court of Appeals for Veterans Claims, in Washington. A spokesman for the V.A. did not respond to requests for an interview.

In the years that Wiccans have been petitioning, the department has approved emblems for at least six groups, including the obscure Izumo Taishakyo Mission of Hawaii.

Kathleen Egbert, a Wiccan priestess in Laurel, Md., is among the plaintiffs. Her father, Abraham Kooiman, fought in World War II and received a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart. He died in 2001 at age 77 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery, a Wiccan without a symbol on his headstone.

On a side note, I have to admit that I’m amused with the atheist enblem, but I can’t come up with a better one.

But on a more serious note, many of my Wiccan/neopagan/pagan/whatever friends, including a Marine, are quite passionate about their religious beliefs. The idea that one religious group can’t get representation of this important part of their lives on a military headstone while others can seems to me to be an awfully good argument for allowing any symbol or picture the deceased (or their next of kin) choose, or eliminating the emblems altogether. My grandfather is a veteran of Korea. He was raised Roman Catholic but has long since been areligious. His passion has always been boating and the sea. Should he opt for a free headstone, perhaps a sailboat would be more to his liking, more emblematic of his life than a cross.

Obviously there are some practical consideration, like where these designs are going to come from and time and cost considerations. But shouldn’t this have been thought of before? That maybe someone somewhere would create a new religion and that it would put people in this situation? What if a Scientologist wants one of these headstones? I don’t see any Scientology emblems there. There has to be some better solution than pre-approved religious symbols.

“Whoever has theological blood in his veins is shifty and dishonorable in all things. The pathetic thing is that grows out of this condition called ‘faith’: in other words, closing one’s eyes upon one’s self once for all, to avoid suffering the sight of incurable falsehood.”

– Friedrich Nietzsche

“It was a better life. And I don’t mean all the travelling, seeing aliens and spaceships and things, that don’t matter. The Doctor showed me a better way of living your life. You know, he showed you too. You don’t just give up. You don’t just let things happen. You make a stand. You say no! You have the guts to do what’s right when everyone else just runs away!”
– Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) in Doctor Who