Now I Get It!

For several years now, I’ve been confused about the GOP’s constant warnings about  “socialism”–usually invoked to dismiss reasonable government efforts to address obvious problems and inefficiencies. Typically, the target of those accusations bears little or no resemblance to socialism.

Thanks to a recent column by one of my two favorite Nobel-winning economists, Paul Krugman (the other is Joseph Stiglitz), I now understand. 

It isn’t that Republicans don’t know what socialism is, although most clearly don’t. They  define any social co-operation as socialism.

Krugman’s column connected the dots between several seemingly disparate policy areas: gun rights, COVID vaccine denial and Bitcoin, and explained how Republican policies–really, Republican antipathy to anything that might be considered an actual policy–can all be explained by the party’s rejection of Hobbes’ famous proclamation about the necessity of society, and the very negative consequences of living in a “state of nature.” (Life becomes “nasty, brutish and short.”)

Krugman began by reminding readers of the failure of Texas’ electrical grid during the deep freeze last winter. Governor Abbott’s bizarre response wasn’t to strengthen the grid by requiring energy companies to winterize; it was to encourage Texan Bitcoin mining.

This would supposedly reduce the risk of outages because Bitcoin’s huge electricity consumption would eventually expand the state’s generation capacity.

Yes, that’s as crazy as it sounds. But it fits a pattern.

Then there’s the Florida legislature under Governor DeSantis–intent on blocking any measure that might limit the spread of COVID.

They have, however, gone all in on antibody treatments that are far more expensive than vaccines, with DeSantis demanding that the Food and Drug Administration allow use of antibodies that, the F.D.A. has found, don’t work against Omicron.

Krugman then reminds us (as if we needed reminding!) that, although America leads the world in massacres of school children, Republicans absolutely refuse to enact widely-supported, common-sense measures like restrictions on gun sales, required background checks or bans on privately owned assault weapons. Instead, they want to expand access to guns and, in many states, “protect” students by arming schoolteachers.

What do these examples have in common? As Thomas Hobbes could have told you, human beings can only flourish, can only avoid a state of nature in which lives are “nasty, brutish and short,” if they participate in a “commonwealth” — a society in which government takes on much of the responsibility for making life secure. Thus, we have law enforcement precisely so individuals don’t have to go around armed to protect themselves against other people’s violence.

Public health policy, if you think about it, reflects the same principle. Individuals can and should take responsibility for their own health, when they can; but the nature of infectious disease means that there is an essential role for collective action, whether it is public investment in clean water supplies or, yes, mask and vaccine mandates during a pandemic.

And you don’t have to be a socialist to recognize the need for regulation to maintain the reliability of essential aspects of the economy like electricity supply and the monetary system.

Reading this led me to an “aha” moment. The reason the GOP misuses the word “socialism” is that they have confused this essential social co-operation with the top-down central planning conducted by hardline socialist states. (Democratic socialism of the sort practiced in Scandinavian countries is apparently beyond their capacity to recognize or imagine.)

Krugman says that the modern American right is antisocial —not anti-socialist.  It summarily rejects any policy that relies on social cooperation. The policies he has enumerated, and a number of others, would return us to Hobbes’s dystopian state of nature.

We won’t try to keep guns out of the hands of potential mass murderers; instead, we’ll rely on teacher-vigilantes to gun them down once the shooting has already started. We won’t try to limit the spread of infectious diseases; instead, we’ll tell people to take drugs that are expensive, ineffective or both after they’ve already gotten sick.

Even the party’s weird embrace of Bitcoin falls into this category. As Krugman notes, a number of Republicans have become fanatics about cryptocurrency. He quotes one  Senate candidate who proclaims himself to be “pro-God, pro-family, pro-Bitcoin.” Krugman notes that cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin

play into a fantasy of self-sufficient individualism, of protecting your family with your personal AR-15, treating your Covid with an anti-parasite drug or urine and managing your financial affairs with privately created money, untainted by institutions like governments or banks.

In the end, none of this will work. Government exists for a reason. But the right’s constant attacks on essential government functions will take a toll, making all of our lives nastier, more brutish and shorter.

We need to move America’s Overton Window back from the brink….

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About Those “Sincerely Held” Religious Beliefs…

Well, the insanity is spreading. Examples are coming hot and heavy…

The GOP has declared a riot that killed nine people and did millions in property damage “Legitimate political discourse.” (As a cousin of mine quipped, “And Pearl Harbor was an over-exuberant fireworks display…”)

An Oklahoma bill proposes to fine teachers $10k for teaching anything “that contradicts religion.”( It doesn’t specify which religion…)The proposed act, named the “Students’ Religious Belief Protection Act” would allow parents to demand the removal of any book with “anti-religious content.” The immediate targets would be any discussion of LGBTQ issues, and study of–or presumably reference to– evolution or the big bang theory. (The bill  was introduced by the same wack-a-doodle who introduced a bill to remove books with references to identity, sex and gender from public school libraries.)

Teachers could be sued a minimum of $10,000 “per incident, per individual” and the fines would be paid “from personal resources” not from school funds or from individuals or groups. If the teacher is unable to pay, they will be fired, under the legislation.

I would be shocked if this lunatic proposal became law, even in Oklahoma–but it does give rise to a question that has recently become salient in the context of vaccine denial: what is religion?

After all, if we are going to protect something, we probably should be able to define it.

I regularly receive a newsletter produced by the Divinity School at the University of Chicago, and a recent issue considered that question in the context of “religious exemptions” from vaccine mandates. Are religious exemptions actually “religious,” or are people simply using the First Amendment as a pretext to get out of vaccine requirements?

Large-scale vaccine skepticism is a new phenomenon, but is it a religious phenomenon? As The New York Times’s Ruth Graham reports, evidence suggests “most objections described as religious to vaccines are really a matter of personal — and secular — beliefs.” In an article titled “Religious Opposition to Vaccines Is Rooted in Politics, Not Tradition,” UVA’s Evan Sandsmark argues that vaccine refusal among Christian conservatives has more to do with their politics than their religious convictions. “If they look to the moral reasoning and sources of authority within their traditions,” Sandsmark writes, “they will hear a message on vaccines that differs considerably from those on offer by many Republican leaders.”

Sandsmark is not alone in pointing out that Christianity is not an anti-vax religion. Numerous Christian leaders, including Pope Francis, have made public statements in favor of vaccination, and many scholars have debunked and dismissed the claims of those who say their Christian faith precludes them from getting vaccinated. As Curtis Chang writes, “Within both Catholicism and all the major Protestant denominations, no creed or Scripture in any way prohibits Christians from getting the vaccine.” Berry College’s David Barr puts the point sharply, “When Christians claim a religious exemption to this vaccine mandate because they don’t want to take it, the biblical term for what they’re doing is ‘taking the Lord’s name in vain.’”

As with so many other issues in contemporary society, the devil is in the definition. The newsletter cited a recent PRRI poll in which 52% of people refusing vaccination insisted that getting vaccinated would violate their personal religious beliefs; however, only 33% asserted that getting vaccinated would violate their religion’s teachings.

So–if the religion one purportedly follows does not prohibit vaccination, must we accept the insistence that these “sincerely-held personal beliefs” are religious?

Winnifred Fallers Sullivan, a scholar of both religion and constitutional law, has long argued for the impossibility of religious freedom as most people envision it, pointing out that laws mandating acceptance of religious exemptions require judges to become arbiters of orthodoxy—  determining which beliefs and practices are authentically part of a religious tradition and thus deserving of the exemption. They must determine whether there is doctrinal support from within the individual’s claimed religious tradition for whatever “sincere religious belief” s/he is claiming. If not–if we must accept as “religious” whatever commitments and beliefs a given individual claims are religious– then we are allowing people to decide for themselves which laws they want to obey and which laws they don’t.

So here we are. 

We have thousands of American Christians seeking religious exemptions from a public health measure that will save thousands of lives. Some significant number of those people are

disingenuously using their faith as a pretense for vaccine refusal, others are expressing their tenuous interpretations of the teachings of Christian faith, and others are invoking their own personal religious commitments while acknowledging that these commitments are not shared or supported by their religious authorities. 

The idiot who authored those bills in Oklahoma probably thinks the courts will define “religion” as whatever he personally believes….

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Space: A Down-To-Earth Program

There are lots of reasons to support a robust space program.  (At risk of sounding like Elon Musk, I’ll note that, given the extent of humanity’s reluctance to combat climate change, humans may need to relocate to another planet, so we probably should start looking around for available real estate.)

More practically, those of us who believe in advancing human knowledge are fascinated by what we learn from these forays into and beyond the solar system (currently, we are eagerly awaiting the discoveries of the new James Webb Space Telescope.) Being told we need to justify the space program is like being told to justify science and the search for knowledge in general.

But the space program generates other, quite concrete benefits that are likely to be more persuasive to the people who are unimpressed with the mere expansion of our intellectual horizons and/or who want to direct the funds supporting the space program elsewhere. There is a large number of very down-to-earth improvements we enjoy as a result of the space program.

Every so often, we encounter a list of those technological improvements.

From cell phone cameras to microchips, life on Earth abounds with NASA technology.

Since the Apollo era, NASA technology has found extended life in more terrestrial applications—to such extent that the space agency set up its Technology Transfer Program (T2) in 1976 to streamline getting its patent offerings to the public. Chances are that players in next month’s Super Bowl trained on machines derived from microgravity exercise treadmills used by astronauts on the International Space Station. And you can thank a vibration dampening tool in the lunar-bound Space Launch System rocket—slated for its first test flight this spring—for mitigating shaking in some Manhattan skyscrapers

.Last year, according to the linked report, NASA licensed patents to 220 companies. The T2 website lists its entire patent and software portfolio, plus examples of industrial applications, and the annual NASA Spinoff Report highlights each year’s more novel transfers–characterized by NASA personnel as “kind of the greatest hits and some cool stories of what we’ve been up to lately.”

So what’s in the most recent report?

How about bacteria-inoculated trees that can clean up pollution?  Or an “Iron Man”-like RoboGlove, a robotic glove developed in partnership with General Motors that gives hand movements extra support and strength–sort of a “manual version of a powered exoskeleton.”

Two companies–one in Colorado and one in the U.K.– have translated space-suit technology into temperature-regulating sportswear for professional auto racers.

A company based in Denver is adapting a sensor that was first developed to detect moon dust levels to facilitate the measurement of air pollution here on earth.

Material that was developed to provide insulation in space has been modified and incorporated into outdoor gear to keep people (and batteries) warm.

A system that allowed the growing of plants in space is now helping improve indoor air quality–while also reducing the spread of airborne viruses, like the coronavirus.

Technology developed to harness carbon dioxide for other uses on Mars has been repurposed for both emissions control and–intriguingly–for carbonating beer.

There are many more such applications described at the Spinoff Site, from the development of something called “winglets” that has saved airlines billions in fuel costs to technology that improved the speed and accuracy of eye surgery.

There are two lessons here.

First, when we look at government expenditures, we need to focus on the degree to which programs should be considered investments–and pay attention not just to costs, but to the offsetting value of the benefits generated by those funds. And second, we should recognize that it is not nearly as simple to distinguish between that public investment and “private enterprise” as business spokespeople suggest. An enormous amount of private profit is a result of basic research performed (and paid for) by government–from the basic medical research funded by federal agencies and then patented or otherwise appropriated by Big Pharma, to the multiple innovations of the Space Program barely hinted at above.

Is there government waste? Absolutely. There is waste in every large organization. But an enormous amount of what uninformed critics label waste is anything but.

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Membership Should Have Its Privileges

Remember that commercial for American Express–the one that emphasized that “membership has its privileges”? Several European countries base their social programs on that theory–being a “member,” or citizen, should carry both benefits and responsibilities. (That belief is evidently why the GOP labels them “socialist.”)

In today’s America, radical Right-wingers are intent upon excluding disfavored minorities from the category of “member,” insisting that only White Christians can be “real Americans”–aka members.

That widespread belief that not everyone is a “member” is one of the central flaws of America’s social welfare system–the emphasis on presumed deservingness. You can see it in the dramatic differences in attitudes about means-tested welfare (negative) versus Social Security and Medicare (positive). When a benefit is universal, it doesn’t exacerbate tribal animosities. I’ve never heard anyone complain that “those people” are driving on roads paid for with my tax dollars!

One of the great virtues of a Universal Basic Income is that it would be universal. Everyone would benefit. Not only would it eliminate the costs of America’s enormous welfare bureaucracy and the manifest inequities and humiliations of the present programs, it would avoid the stereotyping of recipients that characterizes such programs.

Non-profit organizations and foundations are beginning to recognize the structural benefits of what they are calling “targeted universalism.” Nonprofit Quarterly –a highly respected academic journal–has launched a series exploring the concept, which was defined in one article as the recognition that our lives are “lived in a web of opportunity. Only if we address all of the mutually reinforcing constraints on opportunity can we expect real progress.”

While “targeted universalism” is not a call for a UBI, it is a call to approach social problems in a holistic way–to recognize the inter-connectedness of adequate housing, nutrition, transportation, and good schools. Addressing these interrelated issues requires income sufficient for basic subsistence–and some fascinating recent research points to  previously unrecognized benefits of ensuring that subsistence.

Several media outlets have reported on a study showing the effects of a basic income stipend on the development of infants’ cognitive faculties. The following quote is from Forbes (hardly a left-wing publication):

Giving mothers an unconditional cash gift of $333 each month may result in their children displaying increased brain activity, according to a study of 1,000 low-income mother-infant groups published Monday by the Proceedings of the National Academies of Sciences, reinforcing previous research linking childhood poverty to differences in brain structure and function.

A few cities and states are currently running–or have recently concluded– pilot programs on UBIs and, despite Republican warnings that the funds would subsidize sloth, drug and alcohol use, research has found that the money has gone primarily to food, housing and education.

There are certainly principled arguments and concerns about how a UBI might be structured and funded, but it seems beyond argument that–in addition to its other shortcomings– our current social safety net is exacerbating, rather than ameliorating, civic discord.

What would happen if the United States embraced a new social contract, beginning with the premise that all citizens are valued members of the American polity, and that such membership has its privileges?

Contracts–including social contracts– are by definition mutual undertakings, agreements in which both sides offer consideration. In my imagined “Brave New World,” government would create an environment within which humans could flourish, an environment within which members of the polity would be guaranteed a basic livelihood, access to health care, a substantive education and an equal place at the civic table. In return, members (aka citizens) would pay their “dues:” higher taxes (especially on the obscenely rich), a stint of public/civic service, and the consistent discharge of civic duties like voting and jury service.

In the Brave New World of my imagining, government would provide both physical and a social infrastructure.

Americans are familiar with the elements of the physical infrastructure: streets, roads, bridges, utilities, parks, museums, public transportation, and the like; we might expand the definition to include common government services like police and fire protection, garbage collection and similar necessities and amenities of community life.

The most consequential elements of my imagined social infrastructure– and by far the most difficult to implement–would be national health care and a UBI. Both would require significant changes to some of the deep-seated cultural assumptions on which the current economy rests.

As the libertarian Niskanen Center has shown, if a UBI could be implemented, it would ease economic insecurities, reduce the gap between rich and poor, restore workers’ bargaining power and (not so incidentally) rescue market capitalism from its descent into corporatism and plutocracy.

Membership would have its privileges.

A girl can dream….

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About That War On Education

Evidently, Indiana’s censorious legislature has company–ours aren’t the only lawmakers issuing “gag orders” to educators.

According to a January report from Pen America,

It has been an extraordinary month for educational gag orders. Over the last three weeks, 71 bills have been introduced or prefiled in state legislatures across the country, a rate of roughly three bills per day. For over a year now, PEN America has been tracking these and similar bills…

According to the Pen report, 122 educational gag orders have been filed in 33 states since January 2021. Of those, 12 have become law in 10 states, and another 88 are currently live.

Of those currently live:

84 target K-12 schools
38 target higher education
48 include a mandatory punishment for those found in violation

When Pen looked at the measures that have been introduced so far in 2022, it found “a significant escalation in both scale and severity.”

Forty-six percent of this year’s bills explicitly target speech in higher education (versus 26 percent in 2021) and 55 percent include some kind of mandatory punishment for violators (versus 37 percent in 2021). Fifteen also include a private right of action. This provision, which we analyzed in an earlier post, gives students, parents, or even ordinary citizens the right to sue schools and recover damages in court.

One final feature that is increasingly common to 2022’s bills is how sloppily many are written. Legislators, in their haste to get these bills out the door and into the headlines, are making basic factual errors, introducing contradictory language, and leaving important terms undefined. Given the stakes, the result will be more than mere confusion. It will be fear.

The Pen report then zeroed in on legislation from a single state, in order to help readers “appreciate” the chilling nature of the threat.

That state? Indiana. (I am so not proud.)

With eight bills currently under consideration, only Missouri (at 19) has made a greater contribution. Of the eight in Indiana, all target public K-12 schools, two target private K-12 as well, six would regulate speech in public colleges and universities, four affect various state agencies, and two threaten public libraries. All are sweeping, all are draconian, and few make any kind of sense.

House Bill 1362, sponsored by Bob Behning ( because of course it was), prohibits teachers and professors from including in their instruction any “anti-American ideologies.” What this means is never defined (because of course it wasn’t), but violators may be sued in court.

Pen tells us that House Bill 1040 is even more confusing. That bill requires teachers to adopt a “posture of impartiality” –but also contains the following language:

Socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are incompatible with and in conflict with the principles of freedom upon which the United States was founded. In addition, students must be instructed that if any of these political systems were to replace the current form of government, the government of the United States would be overthrown and existing freedoms under the Constitution of the United States would no longer exist. As such, socialism, Marxism, communism, totalitarianism, or similar political systems are detrimental to the people of the United States.

As the report notes, this would be farcical if the consequences of failure to comply weren’t so dire. A teacher or school  that failed to navigate the whiplash mandated by this effort to ensure that teachers indoctrinate, rather than educate, would–under this bill– face civil suits, loss of state funding and accreditation, and/or professional discipline up to and including termination.

The linked article describes several other, similar efforts, and I encourage anyone who wants to wallow in despair over Indiana governance to click through.

The none-too-savvy legislators pushing these bills are evidently unaware that kids today can easily access multiple sources of information. (There’s this newfangled thing called the Internet.)

Ironically, these legislative efforts that display our lawmakers’ anti-intellectualism and bigotry also motivate young people to access the information they are trying to suppress. After a Tennessee school board censored a graphic novel about the Holocaust, it soared to the top of Amazon’s best-seller list. Young people (and a number of older ones) have rushed to form banned book clubs.

A few days ago, when I threatened to start an online class in “banned history,” the response was so heavy and positive I’m now seriously considering doing so. (Once I’ve done some research and figured out the logistics, I’ll let you all know.)

What we should be teaching students is how to evaluate the credibility of the sources they consult. Efforts to “shield” them from the uglier realities of the past are  likely to spark interest in exploring that past, and it would be helpful to give them the tools to separate sound scholarship from the propaganda produced by both Left and Right.

Several lawmakers could use those lessons too.

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