I wouldn't even begin to claim to speak for anyone here but myself, but no, I don't think being deliberately insulting is acceptable discourse or behavior, here or elsewhere.
However, and I mean this in the kindest way it is possible to mean a gentle remonstrance, I also think the "you people..." construction implicit in the challenge to all of the commenters here to repudiate someone else's insults is skating right on the edge of what's generally considered acceptable here, though I am aware that is a community standard of Making Light, and not a universal one.
I didn't say the control was being exercised by anyone but the shy people themselves (which is one of the reasons I carefully avoided the word "censorship"), but if it seemed I was implying that, I apologize. Still, I think it's illustrative of the lack of middle ground between the idea that fora are wholly public spaces that should have little or no control over what is said, and the idea that they are more private spaces where active moderation is desirable to create a safer space for communication.
language hat @ 12--You're right that it isn't for everyone, though. It's a place that privileges the more aggressive commenter, and effectively silences the shy. That's also a form of speech-control, and just because it happens invisibly doesn't make it not so.
Xopher, I'm so sorry.
I have to believe, for myself, that it's never wrong to hope, to dare, or to love--even when it doesn't go well it doesn't mean it was the wrong thing to do. But it's important too, to forgive ourselves for the ones we cannot save.
I did say something about it in my journal, but not much, as I hadn't finished it. And now I'm trying to digest it. But I've been talking about it to practically everybody I know, and everybody at work who's come across me nose down in it during lunch. It never fails--people see you avidly reading something, so they want to stroll up and ask you about it. For once, while I minded the interruption, I didn't mind it too much to tell them how awesome the book was.
I also noted a couple of morphing names. Besides Zeb becoming (briefly) Zed, Ange is referred to as Van at one point, just before the concert. And while one character calls Marcus' mother "Lillian," she is introduced to another as "Louisa." It may be too late, and this probably isn't the right place, but my inner copyeditor caught those and then sat at her desk and fretted about whether someone knew about them who could fix it.
Also, I don't necessarily think it's a conspiracy (you know, it's possible to take any argument and push it out so far that it sounds like it could only be put forth by a blithering idiot. I wish you wouldn't, though--it's hurtful and infuriating, and you've rightly objected when you felt it was being done to you). But I do think it's a complicated question that has roots in a certain breakdown of community and willingness to give of ourselves to in order to help one another, and fed by problems of racism and classism that those of us in positions of privilege benefit from not addressing in a meaningful way, or even acknowledging. It goes, in my opinion, much further than education, and even affects how we as a people view society and our relationship to and with it. I think it's way too complicated for vouchers to address, except by pushing the weakest under entirely and pretending it doesn't matter because at least we saved some of the more presentable ones. But I'm also getting angry, so I'm going to take a break from it for a while.
From the GAO report:
While the selected inner city schools in Boston, Chicago, and St. Louis generally spent more per pupil than neighboring suburban schools, when we made adjustments using the highest weights the suburban schools generally spent more in every metropolitan area reviewed, because inner city schools had higher percentages of low-income students. Some research has shown that children from low-income families may require extra resources to perform at the same levels as their nonpoor peers. To address the additional needs of some children in low-income areas, federal education programs target funds to schools in these areas. In some cases, the infusion of federal funds has balanced differences in per-pupil expenditures between selected inner city and suburban schools.
Inner city students in the schools we reviewed generally performed poorly in comparison to students in suburban schools, a disparity that may be related to several differences we identified in the characteristics of inner city and suburban schools. Although research results are inconclusive on the importance of various factors, some studies have shown that greater teacher experience, smaller class size, more library and computer resources, and higher levels of parental involvement are positively related to student achievement. The inner city schools we visited generally had higher percentages of first-year teachers, higher enrollments, fewer library and computer resources, and less in-school parental involvement.
We can't, as a society, do much about the parental involvement. But we can and refuse to give them better equipment, smaller class sizes, and more experienced teachers. I'm not saying the system should be left as it is, which is what you seem to be reading. I'm saying that I don't think a solution that saves only the kids in first and second class and leaves the kids in steerage to drown is one I can really get behind. I was one of the kids in steerage, so I take it kind of personally.
albatross @ 324
It seems to me that what we've actually been doing has been rigging the public school system to fail, so that "market" solutions look perfectly palatable in comparison. Vouchers serve to keep the very poor trapped in the worst of the failing schools--when you have to make a monthly choice between going without food or going without electricity, the difference between coming up with an extra $500 to send one of your children to a better school and coming up with $2000 to do the same is a purely (terrible pun warning) academic one. (BTW, I agree with Lee @313. I've been stepping around it because otherwise I get too upset, but there's a fundamental class issue painting its nails red to hide in the strawberry patch of this whole thread.)
Sure, there's a difference between the backgrounds of the kids in the best and worst schools, and there are probably some teachers that need to not be teaching anymore. But there is also a widespread pooh-poohing of the idea that perhaps we should try funding all schools like we do the good ones, and seeing if they improve. It's been a while since I read Jonathan Kozol's Savage Inequalities, but I found it a very instructive look at the way we've rigged our school systems--for example, the way we tie funding to property taxes. Did you know that poor communities actually tend to tax themselves at a significantly higher rate, though it produces lower actual dollars, in the attempt to improve their schools? If we give one group a load of bricks and another a little pile of sand, I think it's obvious that even if they both do manage to build a house, one group will have an easier time of it, and probably come up with a better end product. The obvious-to-me solution is to give both of them a load of bricks, not to take away some of the sand and then give some of the people on the team a brick apiece.
my previous comment, first line:
...describing was necessarily a libertarian/non-libertarian split. ...
(l'esprit d'already hit post.)
albatross @ 261, I'm not at all sure that what I was describing was a libertarian/non-libertarian split, though elements of it might apply. But I think I was careful not to refer to the views I was outlining as being necessary and sufficient to libertarianism.
I do agree that everything that I have to use for other purposes, I cannot use for my own--I work a 40 (hah. 45, really, and watch it creep...) hour week, and that time is gone, never to be used for gardening. But opportunity costs are what they are--they will not and do not disappear with the implementation of libertarian systems. Every time I make a choice, whether because I am coerced or not, I give up something. Choice itself can even reach the point where it becomes a tyranny, costing more in time and effort than a person might like to spend.
My eventual point was, though, that it seems reasonable people can disagree on where the line is between too much impingement for not enough good (Cylert ban), and enough good to justify the impingement (laws about what side of the road to drive on). But the absolutist stand--which I read as "there is never a point at which it is acceptable to infringe on someone's choices, even a little--death (my own and/or others') is preferable" doesn't seem like one with which a compromise can be hammered out. And so I don't know how to reconcile these views, not even a little.
Thank you again, Daniel--I'm enjoying the discussion, and I hope you are too. Coming from the position Greg describes, where I do feel that the community is an extension of my self (and I am by no means a conformist to the "norm," especially given the "norm" where I live--I have every reason to fear the arbitrary exertion of power), I do value your opinion a great deal, even though we disagree.
I am stumbling toward an epiphany of sorts, I think. (How do you know until you get there?) I think what abi is saying is that there is a fundamental difference between worldviews, where one seems to hold up things--property--as being of the highest importance, and the other puts people in that place. As long as this difference goes unspoken, each person continues to assume that everyone else shares his or her model, and we all talk past each other.
Avram is right--we don't exchange our interpersonal relationships on the market; it's not a good system for valuing people. The idea that the market is always the best solution is one that is based in the idea that things are of primary importance, and it works just fine in areas where that's true (books, widgets, whatever). But where people are of primary importance, it doesn't work well at all (healthcare, education).
I'm seeing the same split between the idea that taxation=coercion=violence=immoral, and the idea that complete lassez-faire leads to social breakdown with its accompanying violence and harm, which is immoral. In the first view, property is the supreme good, and violating someone's right to it is akin to slavery, and thus a terrible stain on the soul, much greater than the stain caused by allowing someone to come to harm. In the second, people's lives and freedom from harm and (actual, not threat of) violence are the supreme good, and to withhold things at the cost of lives, health, or safety is a moral evil much greater than that of taking some things, even under the threat of coercion.
I think, coming to it from the second point of view, that there is reasonable discussion to be had about where the balance should be placed between enforcing the good of all (not always accomplished, but it is the ideal), and allowing people to go their own ways without undue interference, but that these are fundamentally in tension to a certain degree. Seatbelt laws, for example, I think balance the impingement on personal autonomy with enough good to justify them. The cop arresting the woman in the original post, on the other hand, did not balance those needs at all well.
In the first point of view, though--I don't see where any discussion could be had; it seems a very absolutist view to me. Am I wrong in that? Is there wiggle room there? If so, where?
Oops. For "Darfur" please read "Congo," or if you prefer, for "hide in the bush every night hoping I am not found and repeatedly gang-raped" read "live in fear that I will be kidnapped, raped, or murdered"--I am confusing my atrocities.
Would there were not enough of them for me to be confused about. :(
Daniel Boone @ 192, I think that's got to be one of the best descriptions/defenses of idealistic libertarianism I've ever read. Thank you.
I still think it's flawed, and in the same way that Communism (which I find very appealing in principle) is. Both of them are systems that work just fine, as long as everyone in the group living under it thinks exactly alike about it. Both require a remarkable amount of selflessness from everyone involved in order to produce a society with good outcomes. My attitude (these days) toward idealist collectivism is: it's a perfect system, on paper. Unfortunately, humans are neither perfect, nor paper. I think idealistic anarchy is much the same.
Also cf. our Gracious Hostess, from the sidebar of Commonplaces: "If there is no willingness to use force to defend civil society, it’s civil society that goes away, not force."
You say :Will the skies fall? Would the result be red of tooth and claw? I don't know. I don't think so, but I don't know.
But I think we can draw instructive parallels from places where the rule of law has disappeared, like Darfur. It may be as you say, that this is preferable to making people pay taxes with the tacit implication that force may be used to make them comply. But I can't help but think living in a society where I don't have to hide in the bush every night hoping I am not found and repeatedly gang-raped more than makes up for filing my taxes.
Hilary @ 428,
I recently went poking through my fountain and dip pens due to this
thread, and came upon the Platinum desk pen I bought in Japan. Worried
that I might not be able to get cartridges for it here in the US, I did
a little googling. I found that Platinum pens are spottily available
here (though not the nicer ones that I would want) and take only their
own proprietary cartridges (feh), but the good news is that the
cartridges are available here, in black, blue, and red, and they also
have a piston converter that is also available in the US. Pendemonium
carries all of the colors of cartridge as well as the converter. I
haven't ever ordered anything from them, so I don't know if it's a good
place to buy from or not, but their prices seem reasonable.
#256 Nancy Lebovitz
I'm not sure that I'd agree that between Christian and Muslim fundamentalism there's much distance in terms of misogyny (and homophobia)--I linked to those instances as being ones of scary religious fundamentalism in our current time, but I also considered and rejected linking to items on witch-burning, the torture of heretics, and the execution (by burning alive) of gay men in Venice during the early Renaissance.
albatross @ 231
I wish I could be as sanguine about what the reality might be under the religious right, but I read about this, or see this, and I lie awake at night wondering if I would have the courage to take my own life before they came for me, or if I would sell out my beloved in an attempt to save myself, if the American Taliban really came to control in this country. Even without that much control, they still diminish my life--I am afraid and hopeless (and in therapy), because it's terrifying and alienating to feel like you're surrounded by people who hate you, or who think you're somehow less than human, just because of something like your plumbing, the color of your skin, or who you love.
I can't think of a single good reason NOT to read this book! I'd be yelling about proper grammar and laughing my ass off until I finished it, and then continue giggling at random intervals for MONTHS. XD (I mean, thinking about Atlanta Nights still brings a grin to my face, and that was what, three years ago?)
Except I don't want to give her any money for it, so that's kind of a problem.
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