Stefan, classifying chimps in genus homo doesn't mean declaring them the same species as homo sapiens and entitled to the same rights as ourselves. What it would do is tidy up the rather embarrassing fact that the category "great apes" makes no sense unless you include humans in it. If we were talking about another group of four species with the same degrees of relatedness as humans, the two chimp species, and gorillas, the first three would be in the same genus, and the fourth probably not.
In terms of their mental abilities and awareness, they're not us, but they're not just another animal, either. Being accurate about how closely related they are might help in efforts to treat them, not like homo sapiens, but more appropriately than we mostly do now.
Mr Rivers,
Show me where I said it's only okay for people I agree with, or for smart people, or for rich people.
_Everyone_ has responsibility, in a democracy.
(Side note; of _course_ we're a democracy--a representative democracy. I get almighty tired of people claiming "we're not a democracy", usually in response some argument that draws directly on the fact of the US being a democracy. If I may borrow from a former overnight talkhost here in Boston: The UK is a democracy, but not republic; Iraq is a republic, but not a democracy; the US is both, a democratic republic.)
I know it hasn't escaped your attention that people have demonstrations in favor of viewpoints I don't like, such as the KKK marching for segregation, and anti-abortion activists picketing women's health clinics, and, currently, people who support the Iraq war marching in favor of that.
Where the anti-abortion activists cross over the line is when they do more than picket, when they block access, try to force women to stop and listen to them, invade clinics, damage the clinics. That's some of that "direct action" everyone here was disapproving of.
Do you see the difference?
In a democracy, everyone has responsibility, and we trust to the people to, _eventually_, reach the best decision if open debate and discussion and the free flow of information prevails. (Allowing, of course, that sometimes, eventually will be a long time coming.)
And, as Bruce says, no question is finally settled until people aren't interested in changing it anymore. Merely having lost an election doesn't require anyone to shut up--and having won one doesn't entitle anyone to tell people they're obliged to drop the subject.
Is this messy? Of course it is. But consider the alternatives.
Mr Rivers:
If you had actually been reading the posts in this thread, it might have caught your attention that everyone here has described direct action as a _bad_ thing, on both moral and practical grounds.
Of course, by "direct action" we have been referring to, not every single form and method of expressing protest, but a specific category of protest: the kind that involves disrupting the lives of other people without their consent. Property destruction is not a valid, moral form of protest, nor is blocking streets, or denial-of-service attacks.
There's another kind of civil disobedience, though, the kind Thoreau advocated and engaged in: saying "this law is morally wrong", disobeying it in a way that is visible but _not_ disruptive or destructive, and being willing to take the legal and practical consequences of that decision.
Thoreau went to jail for not paying the taxes that supported the Mexican War. Rosa Parks, and the young men who sat at the legally segregated lunch counters and asked to be served, likewise accepted responsibility for choosing to break immoral laws. Do you seriously mean to say that what Thoreau, and Rosa Parks, and lunch counter protesters, was _immoral_, and anti-democratic? If so, I think you're deeply confused about what democracy is.
In a democracy, it's not enough to say "that's the law, so even if it's wrong, that's what I have to do." We are _responsible_ for the laws, and for the actions of our government, because sovereignty resides in We The People, not in whoever happens to currently occupy the White House, the Capitol Building, and state houses and city and town halls all over the country.
If we believe a law is wrong--not just that we happen to disagree with it, but that it's really wrong, morally or in terms of serious, practical negative effects, we have a responsibility to say so, and to attempt persuade our fellow citizens, including the ones currently serving as "the government" that it's wrong, and needs to be changed.
And very serious wrongs merit extra attention and effort.
Seeing what happened when well-dressed, obviously respectable people did inherently reasonable things, like sitting in an available seat on the bus, or sitting down at a lunch counter and asking to be served lunch, played a big role in making visible to people how innately brutal segregation was. Do you believe that--not that segregation should have been left in place, I know you don't believe that--but that it would have been better to let it remain in place, than to have Rosa Parks illegally sit in a seat at the front of the bus? Are you quite sure of that?
Yes, breaking the law is a serious matter, not to be done lightly. Obeying an immoral law is also a serious matter, and not to be done lightly. "It's the law" is not a defense to be dismissed lightly, but it's not always sufficient, either.
As citizens in a democratic society, we are responsible for our choices--whichever way we decide. We cannot evade that responsibility.
Who decides? Each of us, every day--and our fellow citizens also make their choices. Segregation laws ended in this country when enough Americans decided that that was the correct response to what they were seeing in the places where segregation laws were most heavily enacted and enforced--and they only _saw_ that because the civil disobedience of the civil rights activists showed it to them. Without that, it was far too easy to simply not see what the laws were doing, to blandly assume that separation was natural and was doing no harm.
Who's responsible? We are. Who decides? We do.
No way out of that; even deciding that you'll never break a law except for your own personal convenience is making a choice, for which you bear responsibility.
Mr Rivers:
Apparently you have not been reading carefully; exactly one person here, that I've seen, has argued that "direct action" might be useful, sometimes, even though its effects are negative. That person did so in response to general agreement to the proposition that "direct action" is bad in both moral and practical, and got a chorus of further criticism of "direct action" in response.
As for not assuming any respondents here are "leftists", was that post further up, that includes the sentence, "You leftists need to get a grip.", not from you? It certainly appears to be from someone using your email address. You might want to check into that.
I note that you continue to slide right over the any differences between different kinds of "extra-legal action". Is it your position that it was morally wrong of Rosa Parks to sit in the front of that bus, or for quiet, polite black people to sit at a legally segregated whites-only lunch counter? Were these actions morally equivalent to blocking traffic for hours, at great inconvenience and possible endangerment for others, to protest something completely unrelated to the roads or the traffic laws?
And you still have not answered Bruce's question: have you never exceeded the speed limit, or jaywalked, or had an alcoholic drink even a few days before reaching whatever the legal age was in your state at the time? Are you quite certain you've never violated your state's sodomy laws (have you even exerted yourself to find out in detail what they are, so that you can comply?) Are you now and have you always been in 100% compliance with all federal, state, and local tax laws?
Or is just completely different, and obviously moral and correct, and in keeping with the principles of a democratic society, when you violate the law for your own convenience and comfort, and a moral outrage when Rosa Parks does so because the law, that particular law, was morally unacceptable in a free and democratic society?
Anna, "direct action" that alienates people currently opposed to or doubtful about the war and gives Ashcroft & Co. the excuse they want for repression, and timidly doing nothing, are not the only options. Raimondo suggests a number of possibilities--such as challenging the pro-war folks to a series of town hall debates, a 21st-century version of the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Confront them with the unanswered questions about this war, and do it in the full view of the American people.
"Freedom-kissing" has kind of a ring to it, and makes some sense, unlike "freedom fries", "freedom toast", or any of the other silly examples. That one might possibly catch on.:)
Barry, I don't know if you thought you were replying to me, but I've believed for a couple of decades now that "PC" is one of the strongest and longest-lasting examples of the right wing accusing liberals of doing what they're doing themselves. I see a big difference between the first few people I saw being interviewed about their decisions to relabel French fries as "freedom fries" in their own restaurants, who didn't appear to be amazingly het up about the matter, and the House of Representatives doing the same thing, to the tune of intense, nonsensical rants about the French "stabbing us in the back", instead of having a serious debate on Bush's war policy.
Private individuals expressing political opinions by making choices about what they'll put on their restaurant menus, or what wines they'll buy, or whatever, is one thing. The Congress treating this kind of thing as an acceptable substitute for doing their jobs is another matter, and a national embarrassment.
I'd have thought that even the dimmest bulbs would be able to reason out that Anglicizing the spelling in an NSA internal memo that they want the world to believe is a genuine, leaked, internal memo of the NSA, but I'll accept the testimony of Charlie and Andrew that that minimal level of common sense really isn't to be expected of the Observer, or of British newspapers generally.
Does this also explain the substitution of "the SecState" for "SecState", "the Agency" for "NSA", and the careful note that "UNSC" means "UN Security Council" ? Does it explain the "as you know, Bob" tone of the memo, explaining things that must be obvious to the sender and all intended recipients?
I don't doubt for a minute that the US intelligence community is engaging in intelligence gathering with regard to Security Council members and anyone else they think is likely to be a significant player in this. Nor would I be surprised to learn, with this crowd, that they're crossing the line of what's considered standard practice, in the absolute conviction of their right to do what they please.
I also don't doubt for a minute that this supposedly leaked NSA memo was actually written in London or Paris, or someplace else with decent intelligence but a tin ear for American language.
A unilateral war against Iraq whose main apparent motivation is the US government's belief that it has the right to order other countries around and to control access to Middle East oil will do a lot to fuel anti-American feeling amongst people who didn't necessarily hate us before. A genuine UN-authorized coalition war in which many voices, including authorities people respect both inside and outside their own countries, are telling them that yes, this war is really necessary, and it's _not_ all just about American power and American access to cheap oil, but about a real threat to Saddam's neighbors, would do somewhat less to fuel that anti-American feeling.
People who used to respect the US are losing that respect. People who thought we were friends are now starting to believe we're the enemy. People who used to give at least some credence to our efforts to point out that suicide bombings targeting civilians are neither a useful nor a moral tactic, don't any more.
Arrogant unilateralism does not win friends, although it must be conceded that it does influence people.
I grew up with, on the one hand, my father's family, who were all quite capable of sitting in a room, everyone reading their own book, in perfect harmony. And on the other hand, my mother's family, who considered a book an excellent way to while away the moments when there's no one else there.
It drove my mother crazy that my father and I would bring books to the table.
I like people. I do fine in one-on-one conversations. For years, I froze up when I had to address small groups of people, all of whom I knew slightly, and I thought this meant I couldn't cope with "public speaking". Then I started having opportunities to adress somewhat larger groups where I knew very few people. *Very* different experience!
Occasionally, in my less charitable moments, I toy with the idea of extrovert-as-vampire. After all, if they're energized by interactions with lots of people, instead of being somewhat drained by them (like normal people, i.e., like me:)), they're _taking_ that energy from those other people, right? (Yes, I am aware of the huge, gaping holes in this theory.)
Jonathan Rauch may be describing a minority of the general population, but I think it's a large percentage of fandom.
Brian, what are you watching that shows a terror alert banner onscreen constantly? Either none of the stations I watch regularly are doing that, or I'm so oblivious I haven't noticed. No, as I stop and think about it, NECN at least is not doing it; I'd certainly notice something else cluttering the bottom of the screen.
Stampedes are always a risk when there's a large and somewhat confined crowd; it doesn't take a lot to start a panic in a situation like that. And organ transplantation is a procedure fraught with possibilities for error. I think coincidence is a more than adequate explanation, here.
I know some people are taking the raised terror alert seriously; the guy who's wrapping his entire house rather than just one room has been profiled in the news. I have not personnally met anyone who's taking it seriously, though, and it's not hard enough to find duct tape to support the notion that I just know a weird bunch of people.
Patrick, you're a child of the modern age, and you know the best view is always onscreen, not in the stadium.
Libraries have been shifting to systems that don't even retain borrower information, once the borrowed items are returned. The only thing the snoops can find out is what you currently have checked out; there's no way to establish a pattern, even if the library loses the fight and has to hand over what they do have.
You wrong me, Teresa, you wrong me! I had my one vote, just like all the other NESFA regular members! Surely I can't be held guilty merely for having a strong feeling that we got the right winner(s).
Granted, I was the one encouraging people to remember to vote, and had the happy task of counting the ballots and seeing the result come out as it did. And, of course, the delight of making the presentation.
Nothing else would have induced to wear the Cruella deVille boots a second night in a row.
Yes, Tim, the NESFA folks are _aware_ of the stuff that Patrick gets published. We even read it.:)
The Skylark is for more than that, of course; it's, as the page says, for contributions to science fiction "...both through work in the field and by exemplifying the personal qualities which made the late "Doc" Smith well-loved by those who knew him." Patrick and Teresa are thoroughly deserving recipients, and I was tickled pink to do the presentation.
But I hope they'll heed the traditional safety warning which Jane repeated above, about where to put the Skylark.
I'm very sorry about Teresa's grandmother.
| Year | Number of comments posted |
|---|---|
| 2004 | 1 |
| 2003 | 13 |
Total: 14 comments. View all these comments on a single page.
The most recent 20 comments posted to Electrolite by Lis Carey:
Show all comments by Lis Carey.