I've taken the liberty of writing up how Dr. Dobson actually raised his son, in the years when Ryan and one of my brothers were in the same Boy Scout troop.
In recent years I've been favoring simple fixed terms for copyright, one renewal, period. I do so partly because I think it's a way of defusing some of the arguments like Will and Jane had above. No, really.
We all agree, I'm pretty sure, that nearly all works make nearly all the money they're going to early on - well within the original 14 years of US law. And many (I don't know what fraction) of the remaining handful make the rest of theirs within 28 years. So far, so good. But then there are people like Jane here, and Asimov, and so on, who have long productive careers to look at.
It's not clear to me that the loss of exclusive control after 28 years would really mean losing much in the way of income. What we'd see, I believe, is a fresh wave of "only authorized edition" and the like emblazoned on covers and used in advertising. "This is the one the creator endorses", put in various ways. Sure, some people will buy cheaper unauthorized editions. But then some people will always buy the cheaper one. I suspect, though of course I can't prove it, that it would have very little effect at all on sales that generate any revenue the creator gets to see.
With a fixed term, the question of a creator's longevity no matters when it comes to use of the work. And that's right and proper - it shouldn't. Once released, the work is an entity of its own, and should be subject to consistent, predictable legal handling.
Bellatrys, I love your categories and examplars. I went from nodding along with interest to laughing out loud and startling the cat, and this is very welcome. I really needed it. And I'm very interested in the rest of your comments, too.
Tina: Declining to do anything is, of course, your choice to make. It's just that it would be nice if you were to couple it with declining to ever complain about an undesirable outcome, given that you've refused to select from among alternatives. (Better, of course, would be to act so as to help nudge things in a better direction, or even a less bad one. But you seem uninterested in that.)
As Graydon points out, Dr. King was not universally loved. He got a lot of support, but a lot of hatred, too. (Look at what the FBI did to him at Hoover's orders, for instance.) If there is a real threat to the rule of Bush's managers, then we can expect the same kind of hatred, and backed by more efficient use of the organs of government and mass communication, too. One of the challenges will be to respond better to the slanders that will inevitably follow, and to somehow communicate around those blocking the major channels.
This is a big part of why I think it'll likely be necessary to build up a new alternative media network; I'm not confident of anyone else's ability to displace those squatting on the current one. They have a demonstrated ability to abandon all restraint in pursuit of their own advantage.
Sounds like good advice to me, Randolph. Thanks.
Lenny, the problem here is that sources you or I would think of as neutral to conservative are, for a lot of the people we need to persuade, hopelessly biased in favor of liberalism and away from the President. It seems unlikely that Fox TV will turn on the President, or the Washington Times, and it's places like them that would have to carry productive negative coverage. And then it plays back into the Right Man Problem: bad news about the consequences of the Right Man's actions won't stick.
I do admit that I'm feeling more pessimistic than is my wont, and assume that I'm missing possibilities - this sort of tunnel perception is a manifestation of low-grade depression, and I know it, and am doing stuff to treat the biochemical imbalances. But I also think that the problem is a real one even when it doesn't seem like so much the whole story to me.
I've been reading (or rather listening to) several books about World War I and aftermath, and pondering what some sf writer or other called the Right Man Problem: the trouble of changing someone's mind when their assessment of who's right and who's wrong depends on something prior to any actual evidence. Dick Cheney can say "go fuck yourself" and justify it as a feel-good measure and Bill Bennett can gamble away millions and not contribute to the coarsening of discourse and the weakening of moral fiber because they're among the Right People. John Kerry can speak at length about his faith and political decision-making and be part of the anti-Christian forces of secularism because he's one of the Wrong People. "He meant well but it ended badly and for reasons he should have seen at the time" does not seem to be a meaningful objection to misdeeds by one of the Right People - if they were right and bad stuff happened, then obviously it's someone else's fault.
I am skeptical that any quantity of framing can reach people who are interpreting the world this way; it seems like the hope must be reaching those who either haven't yet adopted it or have finally run into some crisis of just the right pitch to make them willing to reexamine it. The problem for me as an individual is that I really hate this habit of thought and tend to separate myself promptly from people who demonstrate very much of it. "He meant well but did badly, and must now repair the damage and make amends" is one of the basic judgments in my approach to the world.
Greg, you might want to experiment to see if you are mistaken for some specific Dave, and if so, see what he's got that you don't. :)
Lydia: "You are the one who decides." This is one I often push, too. When someone tries to tell me "Who's to judge?" or "Who's to say?", I like to answer that we all are. Our opinions aren't all equally valuable - we need evidence and thinking about the evidence - but on a whole lot of matters, we are all capable of praising this as right, condemning that as wrong, and saying that the other has some merit but really needs to go back into the brain shop for some more time on the hoist.
I very much like the idea of the center as a place worth visiting and protecting though not where I choose to live. And yes, very true that it won't actually be the center unless all sides are well-expressed.
It's well worth remembering that the currently dominant political discourse wasn't always dominant. The language of political campaigns and policy-making was different ten years ago, and twenty, and so on back. We need to take what's now being said (and thought) into account. But it isn't a straitjacket that we have to accept as defining all that will ever be acceptable. Past reform movements made what had been commonplace seem both scandalous and amenable to change - it takes both. Taking the election results at face value (which I don't, but it makes a handy baseline), we're most of the way there but not quite over the bar just yet. So there's need for invention on a bunch of fronts. And it begins, I think, with refusing to accept the mold that's handed to us.
"Redefine the question" is one of those useful bits of advice for test-taking. When you can't quite answer the question as put, or you don't want to, change it to something else. It's good in debating, too - one of the secrets to successful forensic competition is pushing the resolution as far as you can toward what you're best prepared to advocate and your opponents are least prepared to resist. It's true in the political struggle, too.
Hmm, Lucy. There is much merit in what you say, as I ponder what I know of past progressive movements. It seems like the key to success is often not so much swinging around those already committed to some other cause, but winning those who didn't feel they had much of a cause at all.
The title of Patrick's link brings something clearly into focus:
Here, I'm not responding to conservatives.
When I deal with my conservative and otherwise Bush-supporting friends, I don't launch straight into the moral charges like I've tallied above. I'm interested in persuasion and cooperation, where possible. I mean, my preferred government would make them more secure, prosperous, and in control of their destinies just as it would for me, or at least put fewer obstacles in the path of all those. I'm interested in reading more by Lakoff, but I've long grasped the idea that appeals to the angels of our better nature, to coin a phrase, often work better and in any event are more satisfying to me to make.
But this isn't that. This is me (and others) figuring out what we think about what has happened and is likely to happen and what we wish would happen and like that.
Greg, some of us know Bush voters of many kinds as well: urban and rural, living in the US and expatriate, working class and middle class and professional, libertarians and religious conservatives and secular conservatives, and like that. This isn't like that thing where we don't know anybody so gauche as to be outside our circle of hip consensus views. I, at least, am writing in response to conversations I've had with friends and neighbors, people I deal with in various contexts, and what my friends have told me about their conversations with families and neighbors. I'm an urban kind of guy, but I'm only at one remove from wildly different environments, thanks to various accidents of personal and family history. The fact that you disagree with the views expressed does not make them ignorant.
What I'm doing here is reaching judgments, and most particularly saying that good intentions do not entirely excuse evil results. It matters that someone might wish for a society where people are gainfully employed, with their choice of jobs, able to enter into happy relationships and raise good families, and like that. It does not stop me from pointing out that their actions will lead to poverty, social stratification, disruption of families, and other bad stuff...and that they had the opportunity to know this, if they paid more attention to results and less to rhetoric about desires.
To personalize this, I should note that I'm doing a lot of reexamination these days. I feel myself in the midst of a crisis of personal political values, where things I've relied on prove simply insufficient but I'm not sure which alternatives I actually favor any more. I'm deeply conflicted on many matters, and trying hard to anchor angry passions in considered thoughts. It's hard. There may be an element of the echo chamber "let's say the same old things again and again" for some people, but not for me. This is work in progress, with some fresh insights practically every day. I need this time to get my head into an order suitable for upcoming challenges.
Tina, I'd file that under "ignore", but you may be right and it warrants a fifth category. If I do that tally again, I'll keep it in mind. Thanks! (I hate feeling like I've skipped what should have been obvious.)
Thanks, Patrick.
The real question for me is what constitutes a suitable forum for discussing these things with a bunch of people I share some things but not all things in common with. It could all be done through e-mail, IM, and private subscription-required forums, but each of those would cut out some folks I want to hear from. An open forum like this, where many things but not all things go, seems to me to occupy a special and very important place in the great scheme of, er, things.
Greg, there are precisely four possibilities for Bush voters with regard to torture:
1. They never heard about it. These people are too ill-informed to make reliable voters.
2. They ignored it.
3. They chose to downplay it as unimportant in the face of the war on terror, their pet moral crusade, or whatever.
4. They endorsed it as entirely or mostly suitable.
None of these reflect well on them. There is no rationale for supporting torture that I care to respect as moral. The very best outcome is that I regard it as a serious moral lapse on the part of otherwise virtuous people (as is the case with my friends who supported Bush), and I can only hope that it is an aberration rather than a key element in a sustained moral slide.
Pericat continues to speak for me, too. This isn't a campaign. This isn't even, say, Jerry Falwell's broadcasts, where in the last few days alone he's referred to NOW as the National Organization of Witches, or Cannity & Holmes, where Falwell called the ACLU anti-Christ. This is a public space, but it is also a fairly obscure one.
We do need effective strategies for upcoming campaigns. But strategy exists to serve a goal. And we can't work out that unless we know what in fact we do think and want. This is standard stuff in group planning - we are clarifying our values and aims. Later we will decide what electoral strategy best advances them, but policy with values is precisely part of the problem we face. So can these demands that we adopt the same reckless, immoral obsession with means that characterizes our enemies. (They think we're their enemies, at least.) We are right now doing the first and crucial step in getting to a wise, just, moral, and effective response.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2005 | 3 |
| 2004 | 59 |
| 2003 | 49 |
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