Welcome to the Twilight Zone

Sometimes, in their zeal to ensure that gays remain second-class citizens, legislators produce proposals so breathtakingly wacko that you have to wonder whether you have wandered into an alternate universe.

 

Such a proposal has been offered—presumably, with a straight face—by Indiana State Senator Pat Miller, the author and sponsor of a measure entitled (and I am not making this up) “Unauthorized Reproduction.” The bill would require every woman in Indiana seeking to become a mother through “assisted reproduction” to file for the government’s permission. For purposes of this legislation, “assisted reproduction” is not a reference to the sort of “assistance” most of us have reproducing—rather, it is intended to mean the use of in vitro fertilization, sperm donation, or similar technologies.  The bill requires the wannabe mother to file a form called a “petition for parentage.” And only married women would be entitled to be issued a “gestational certificate.” (Ya gotta love the language!)

 

The draft of the law further provides that an “intended parent” who “knowingly or willingly” participates in an artificial reproduction procedure without the express approval of the all-knowing, all-powerful state, will be guilty of a crime—a class B misdemeanor. The doctor who facilitates this heinous crime against humanity will also be subject to criminal sanctions.

 

So, single women who have decided not to wait for Mr. Right are out of luck, along with gay men or lesbians who wish to have children by “unauthorized” means. (In reality, nothing in the bill as drafted, so far as I can see, would prevent a married woman from acting as a surrogate for a gay couple. Nor would anything prevent a “marriage of convenience” if a lesbian desiring a baby could prevail upon a friend to accommodate her. But laws of this sort are rarely effective, and that isn’t really the intent. The intent is to confirm the right of the state to determine what constitutes “normal” and “proper” behavior.)

 

Where does the good senator propose that this intrusion into individual lives stop? What about scofflaws who go to another state for a procedure, or resort to the old turkey baster? Maybe we should require that they abort?

 

The senator’s wacko proposal is a perfectly logical extension of other positions taken by the numerous self-appointed guardians of American “morality” who currently rule us. These are the people who knew better than the doctors who actually examined her whether Terri Shaivo was brain-dead, and who knew better than the multiple judges who actually heard evidence what her wishes were. These are the “compassionate” government officials who know that what poor people really need isn’t food or jobs—it’s prayer and “better values.” These are the lawmakers who know what is best for my children—from the books libraries should loan them, to the internet access they should have, to the content of their biology textbooks, to the sexual orientations of their parents. These are the people determined to use the power of the state to prevent people from sinning. This half-baked bill is part and parcel of the same, single-minded focus on using government to advance fundamentalist religious beliefs.

 

Whatever happened to the philosophy that animated this nation’s founders—their firm belief in restraining the power of government, and separating church from state? And what has happened to the vigilance of free citizens protecting their precious liberties? What can we say about a political environment where a state senator can actually believe that this morally offensive proposal requiring people to petition the government for permission to become parents is an appropriate exercise of government authority?

 

Welcome to the Twilight Zone. 

 

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Spoils of War

Americans really like to wage war—at least when it comes to domestic issues. There was Johnson’s War on Poverty, and Nixon’s War on Drugs (an Energizer Bunny of a war—still going strong). President Bush loses no opportunity to remind us that we are fighting a War on Terror.

We like our domestic wars for the same reasons we like sports contests: they are relatively short-term conflicts, and when they’re over, somebody won, and somebody else lost. Mission accomplished! Let’s go to the mall.

We aren’t quite so hot when it comes to the sustained, boring, never-ending business of making our government function. Where’s the excitement, after all, in policing, maintaining, coordinating and fine-tuning governing institutions? Those tasks offer none of the adrenalin rush of our “wars.” They don’t offer the same kinds of opportunities for pontificating on The Meaning of it All. And, of course, they rarely offer the lucrative rewards available to players who had the good sense to sign on with the winners. So we run American government at all levels pretty much the way we conduct our sporting events: we pay attention while the teams are on the field, and we lavishly reward the guys who win. And then we hit the channel button on the remote.

If it hadn’t been Hurricane Katrina, it would have been some other disaster that showed us the result of our constant denigration of actual government operations, our dismissal of all public servants as pathetic bureaucrats unable to function in the private sector. If we weren’t contemptuous of government, we wouldn’t treat national agencies like FEMA and local commissions charged with flood control as “turkey farms”—good-paying jobs for the political hacks who played with the winning team. I mean, it’s not like those agencies do anything important, right? To the victors go the spoils.

Not that patronage doesn’t have its place. We elect people (presumably) based upon their promise to steer government in a certain policy direction, and they are entitled to fill policymaking positions with people who agree with those directions. Theoretically, at least, we hold them accountable when they give important positions to people who can’t do the job. (And lots of people can’t. As easy as it is to pick on Michael Brown and his “experience” in horse-breeding, even real success in the private sector is no guarantee that someone won’t be clueless when it comes to the very different “business” we call government. It’s a lot harder to run a bureaucracy than it is to fight a battle, political or otherwise.) But most government work isn’t policy—it’s implementation. Is this air clean? Is this food safe? Will this city flood? These are functions than require a longer attention span than four or eight years.

Much as partisan ideologues hate to admit it, there’s a lot of government work that needs to be protected against partisan political priorities—and a lot of jobs that shouldn’t be handed out to turkeys as spoils of war.

  

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Spoils of War

Americans really like to wage war—at least when it comes to domestic issues. There was Johnson’s War on Poverty, and Nixon’s War on Drugs (an Energizer Bunny of a war—still going strong). President Bush loses no opportunity to remind us that we are fighting a War on Terror.

 

We like our domestic wars for the same reasons we like sports contests: they are relatively short-term conflicts, and when they’re over, somebody won, and somebody else lost. Mission accomplished! Let’s go to the mall.

 

We aren’t quite so hot when it comes to the sustained, boring, never-ending business of making our government function. Where’s the excitement, after all, in policing, maintaining, coordinating and fine-tuning governing institutions? Those tasks offer none of the adrenalin rush of our “wars.” They don’t offer the same kinds of opportunities for pontificating on The Meaning of it All. And, of course, they rarely offer the lucrative rewards available to players who had the good sense to sign on with the winners. So we run American government at all levels pretty much the way we conduct our sporting events: we pay attention while the teams are on the field, and we lavishly reward the guys who win. And then we hit the channel button on the remote.

 

If it hadn’t been Hurricane Katrina, it would have been some other disaster that showed us the result of our constant denigration of actual government operations, our dismissal of all public servants as pathetic bureaucrats unable to function in the private sector. If we weren’t contemptuous of government, we wouldn’t treat national agencies like FEMA and local commissions charged with flood control as “turkey farms”—good-paying jobs for the political hacks who played with the winning team. I mean, it’s not like those agencies do anything important, right? To the victors go the spoils.

 

Not that patronage doesn’t have its place. We elect people (presumably) based upon their promise to steer government in a certain policy direction, and they are entitled to fill policymaking positions with people who agree with those directions. Theoretically, at least, we hold them accountable when they give important positions to people who can’t do the job. (And lots of people can’t. As easy as it is to pick on Michael Brown and his “experience” in horse-breeding, even real success in the private sector is no guarantee that someone won’t be clueless when it comes to the very different “business” we call government. It’s a lot harder to run a bureaucracy than it is to fight a battle, political or otherwise.) But most government work isn’t policy—it’s implementation. Is this air clean? Is this food safe? Will this city flood? These are functions than require a longer attention span than four or eight years.

Much as partisan ideologues hate to admit it, there’s a lot of government work that needs to be protected against partisan political priorities—and a lot of jobs that shouldn’t be handed out to turkeys as spoils of war.

 

 

 

  

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Different Realities

Paradigms are sets of assumptions about the world that condition our view of reality–worldviews that preclude recognizing other possibilities. Management consultants sometimes use paradigm theory to explain the failure of businesses to adapt to changing realities. An often-cited example is the digital watch. When inventors took the concept to Swiss watchmakers, they were dismissed because "watches have mainsprings," and a Japanese industry was created.
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