Eric Vieth at Dangerous Intersections has a fascinating–and chilling–review of Antonin Scalia’s position on executing people who are proved innocent after being convicted in a “fair” trial. Hint: “they probably did something wrong anyway…”
Category Archives: Random Blogging
What Should Government Do?
My husband and I took our two youngest grandchildren to McCormick’s Creek State Park last weekend. McCormick’s Creek is one of Indiana’s state parks; located in the southern third of the state, it boasts acres of woods, a very nice (and reasonably priced) inn, and the requisite picnic areas and playgrounds. The weather was lovely, and the park was full of families.
While we were at the park, some 70,000 people were descending on Washington, D.C. to make a statement about their anger at “big government.” (Actually, it wasn’t too clear WHAT they were so angry about; apparently, it was an all-purpose “pox on your house” sort of event. A significant number just seemed royally pissed that a black Democrat had won the election.)
Giving the protestors/tea baggers the benefit of the doubt, their message seemed to be that government is too big, doing too much, spending too much and they want it to stop.
Which gets me back to the lovely state park we enjoyed with so many other citizens over the weekend. Should state and local government provide amenities like parks, museums and libraries? The Monon Trail gets massive use; was it okay for government to create it? What about street lights? Police and fire protection are generally agreed to be appropriate uses of our tax dollars, but there is considerable debate over spending those dollars on sports arenas, or even on the arts.
Maybe what the protestors are saying is that these more local expenditures are okay, but the federal government is too big. Again, though–“too big” is too general. What would these folks like the federal government to stop doing? National defense? (I could see protesting unnecessary wars, but these are the people who appear to support those.) National parks? Social security and Medicare? Should the FDA stop testing our foods for things like e coli? Stop regulating banks and big businesses? (We did stop that, for all intents and purposes, during the Bush Administration. That didn’t turn out very well.)
I’m certainly not saying that everything government does needs to be done by government. (I would keep the parks, however. And quite a number of other functions we ask government to perform.) But people who simply rant about “too big” and “too much,” without specifying what they are prepared to do without, aren’t very persuasive.
This Made Me Laugh
A little humor for the weekend (h/t Ed Brayton at Dispatches from the Culture Wars):
From Butch Hancock of the band Flatlanders:
“Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love.”
This Worries Me a Lot
Every couple of years, I team up with the Dean of the Journalism school at IUPUI to teach a course in Mass Media and Public Affairs. To suggest that it is challenging to describe the relationship between sound information and public policy would be a definite understatement! It was challenging even before newspapers began failing, and right now, it is anyone’s guess what the media landscape will look like ten years hence.
A recent article in the Atlantic addresses journalism’s profound transition from newspapers and broadcast evening news to…what, exactly? We can’t yet know, but Mark Bowden, the author, describes today’s landscape pretty accurately:
With journalists being laid off in droves, ideologues have stepped forward to provide the “reporting” that feeds the 24-hour news cycle. The collapse of journalism means that the quest for information has been superseded by the quest for ammunition . . .
I Didn’t Know About This
I had, of course, heard of Alan Turing. I knew he was brilliant, and had cracked Nazi codes during WWII, allowing the allies to access information that was critical to winning the war. But I was unaware of the tragic “back story,” until I read that there was a movement in England to issue a posthumous apology to him.
As Ed Brayton over at Dispatches from the Culture Wars http://scienceblogs.com/dispatches/2009/09/an_apology_to_alan_turing.php has reported:
Turing’s story is both remarkable and appalling. His work laid the foundation for the development of computers, a development as significant as the harnessing of fire or the invention of the telephone. But during WW2, he was also the man largely responsible for breaking the Nazi codes and allowing the good guys to win that war and prevent Hitler from taking over.
His reward for that? He was prosecuted for being a homosexual, stripped of his security clearance, and subjected to chemical castration. He killed himself two years later. One of the backers of this campaign said, “With Turing’s death, Britain and the world lost one of its finest intellectual minds. A government apology and posthumous pardon are long overdue.”
How sad. Another example of unreasoning hatred depriving mankind of a great resource. It reminds me of the Arabic-speaking gay soldiers discharged under “don’t ask, don’t tell,” even as the U.S. was desperate for recruits who could speak Arabic.
I will never understand people who hate or fear other people so much–people they don’t even know!–that they are willing to harm themselves in order to hurt “them.”